Musical practice and cognitive aging: two cross-sectional studies point to phonemic fluency as a potential candidate for a use-dependent adaptation

Because of permanent use-dependent brain plasticity, all lifelong individuals' experiences are believed to influence the cognitive aging quality. In older individuals, both former and current musical practices have been associated with better verbal skills, visual memory, processing speed, and planning function. This work sought for an interaction between musical practice and cognitive aging by comparing musician and non-musician individuals for two lifetime periods (middle and late adulthood). Long-term memory, auditory-verbal short-term memory, processing speed, non-verbal reasoning, and verbal fluencies were assessed. In Study 1, measures of processing speed and auditory-verbal short-term memory were significantly better performed by musicians compared with controls, but both groups displayed the same age-related differences. For verbal fluencies, musicians scored higher than controls and displayed different age effects. In Study 2, we found that lifetime period at training onset (childhood vs. adulthood) was associated with phonemic, but not semantic, fluency performances (musicians who had started to practice in adulthood did not perform better on phonemic fluency than non-musicians). Current frequency of training did not account for musicians' scores on either of these two measures. These patterns of results are discussed by setting the hypothesis of a transformative effect of musical practice against a non-causal explanation

Musical experience prior to traumatic exposure as a resilience factor: a conceptual analysis

Resilience mechanisms can be dynamically triggered throughout the lifecourse by resilience factors in order to prevent individuals from developing stress-related pathologies such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Some interventional studies have suggested that listening to music and musical practice after experiencing a traumatic event decrease the intensity of PTSD, but surprisingly, no study to our knowledge has explored musical experience as a potential resilience factor before the potential occurrence of a traumatic event. In the present conceptual analysis, we sought to summarize what is known about the concept of resilience and how musical experience could trigger two key mechanisms altered in PTSD: emotion regulation and cognitive control. Our hypothesis is that the stimulation of these two mechanisms by musical experience during the pre-traumatic period could help protect against the symptoms of emotional dysregulation and intrusions present in PTSD. We then developed a new framework to guide future research aimed at isolating and investigating the protective role of musical experience regarding the development of PTSD in response to trauma. The clinical application of this type of research could be to develop pre-trauma training that promotes emotional regulation and cognitive control, aimed at populations at risk of developing PTSD such as healthcare workers, police officers, and military staffs

Boosting Autobiographical Memory and the Sense of Identity of Alzheimer Patients Through Repeated Reminiscence Workshops?

peer reviewedDespite severe amnesia, some studies showed that Alzheimer Disease (AD) patients with moderate to severe dementia keep a consistent, but impoverished representation of themselves, showing preservation of the sense of identity even at severe stages of the illness. Some studies suggest that listening to music can facilitate the reminiscence of autobiographical memories and that stimulating autobiographical memory would be relevant to support the self of these patients. Consequently, we hypothesized that repeated participation to reminiscence workshops, using excerpts of familiar songs as prompts would participate to the enrichment of autobiographical memories, self-representation and sense of identity. We included a group of 20 AD patients with severe dementia residing in nursing homes. Their performances were compared to a control group of 20 matched (age, education, mood) healthy residents living in the same institutions. The experiment was conducted in three phases over a 2-week period. On phase 1, an individual assessment of sense of identity was proposed to each participant. On phase 2, participants joined musical reminiscence workshops (six sessions over 2 weeks for AD patients and 3 sessions over a week for controls). During the third phase (12 days after the first assessment), individual evaluation of autobiographical memory and a second assessment of sense of identity were proposed. Our results showed that, despite their massive amnesia syndrome, autobiographical memories of AD reached at the end of the 2 weeks the number and quality of those of matched controls. Moreover, we confirmed a continuity of self-representation in AD patients with a stable profile of the answers between the first and second individual assessments of sense of identity. However, the increase in number and episodic quality of autobiographical memories was not accompanied by an enrichment of the sense of identity. In a complementary study, new patients participated in the same paradigm, but using movie extracts as prompts, and showed very similar effects. We discuss all of these results with regard to the literature showing the significant impact of repetition on the reactivation of memory traces even in very amnestic AD patients at severe stages of the disease

Recognition-based memory through familiarity assessment in severe Alzheimer’s disease

peer reviewe

When Music and Long-Term Memory Interact: Effects of Musical Expertise on Functional and Structural Plasticity in the Hippocampus

The development of musical skills by musicians results in specific structural and functional modifications in the brain. Surprisingly, no functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study has investigated the impact of musical training on brain function during long-term memory retrieval, a faculty particularly important in music. Thus, using fMRI, we examined for the first time this process during a musical familiarity task (i.e., semantic memory for music). Musical expertise induced supplementary activations in the hippocampus, medial frontal gyrus, and superior temporal areas on both sides, suggesting a constant interaction between episodic and semantic memory during this task in musicians. In addition, a voxel-based morphometry (VBM) investigation was performed within these areas and revealed that gray matter density of the hippocampus was higher in musicians than in nonmusicians. Our data indicate that musical expertise critically modifies long-term memory processes and induces structural and functional plasticity in the hippocampus

Do Musicians Have Better Short-Term Memory Than Nonmusicians? A Multilab Study

Musicians are often regarded as a positive example of brain plasticity and associated cognitive benefits. This emerges when experienced musicians (e.g., musicians with more than 10 years of music training and practice) are compared with nonmusicians. A frequently observed behavioral finding is a short-term memory advantage of the former over the latter. Although available meta-analysis reported that the effect size of this advantage is medium (Hedges’s g = 0.5), no literature study was adequately powered to estimate reliably an effect of such size. This multilab study has been ideated, realized, and conducted in lab by several groups that have been working on this topic. Our ultimate goal was to provide a community-driven shared and reliable estimate of the musicians’ short-term memory advantage (if any) and set a method and a standard for future studies in neuroscience and psychology comparing musicians and nonmusicians. Thirty-three research units recruited a total of 600 experienced musicians and 600 nonmusicians, a number that is sufficiently large to estimate a small effect size (Hedges’s g = 0.3) with a high statistical power (i.e., 95%). Subsequently, we measured the difference in short-term memory for musical, verbal, and visuospatial stimuli. We also looked at cognitive, personality, and socioeconomic factors that might mediate the difference. Musicians had better short-term memory than nonmusicians for musical, verbal, and visuospatial stimuli with an effect size of, respectively, Hedges’s gs = 1.08 (95% confidence interval [CI] = [0.94, 1.22]; large), 0.16 (95% CI = [0.02 0.30]; very small), and 0.28 (95% CI = [0.15, 0.41]; small). This work sets the basis for sound research practices in studies comparing musicians and nonmusicians and contributes to the ongoing debate on the possible cognitive benefits of musical training

La mémoire sémantique musicale : apport des données de la neuropsychologie clinique et de la neuro-imagerie fonctionnelle

International audienceNeuropsychological clinical dissociations between musical and linguistic skills in brain damage patients suggest the view of an autonomous musical semantic memory. On the basis of these clinical observations, Isabelle Peretz et al. propose the existence of a pure musical lexicon. However, the nature and the organization of musical semantic representations always drive many debates. Does musical knowledge’s constitute a particular semantic category (like faces), are they purely perceptual representations, and let us must rather speak about musical perceptual memory or musical semantic memory? Moreover, the data resulting from the functional neuroimaging not always clearly highlight a neural specificity during recovery of musical knowledge, and sometimes more support the assumption of a broad covering between verbal and musical semantic memory. We summon up here some clinical observations and functional neuroimaging results allowing to clarify this issue. From these data, and notably our own neuroimaging and Alzheimer Patient’s clinical works, we try to reconcile the apparent discrepancies and to consider the various components of musical semantic memory concept. To summarize, it seems that perceptual level of musical representations are largely sustained by a right temporo-frontal neural network, whereas linguistic and personal autobiographic musical semantic associations are largely driven by a left counterpart temporo-frontal network. These two levels of musical semantic representations, sustained in a bilateral neural distributed network, notably give enlightenment to the remarkable maintenance of musical knowledge’s in long-term memory for brain damage patients.Les observations de dissociations entre les habiletés musicales et langagières chez des patients cérébrolésés suggèrent la possibilité d’une mémoire sémantique musicale autonome. Sur la base de ces observations cliniques, l’existence d’un lexique musical pur est ainsi proposée par Isabelle Peretz et al. Cependant, le format et l’organisation des représentations sémantiques musicales suscitent de nombreux débats. Les connaissances musicales constituent-elles une catégorie sémantique particulière (à l’image des visages), ou s’agit-il de représentations purement perceptives ? Devons-nous plutôt parler de mémoire perceptive musicale ou de mémoire sémantique musicale ? De plus, les données issues de la neuro-imagerie cérébrale fonctionnelle ne mettent pas toujours en évidence une spécificité neurale dans la récupération de connaissances musicales et vont parfois plus dans le sens d’une hypothèse d’un large recouvrement entre mémoire sémantique verbale et musicale. Nous reprenons ici un certain nombre d’observations cliniques et de résultats de neuro-imagerie fonctionnelle permettant d’éclairer cette question. À partir de ces données, et notamment de nos propres recherches en neuro-imagerie, chez des patients atteints de maladie d’Alzheimer, nous tentons de concilier les divergences apparentes et d’envisager les différentes facettes du concept de mémoire sémantique musicale

Les bases neurales de la mémoire sémantique musicale (spécificité et effet de l expertise)

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