Psychology researchers have literally looked inside the minds of musicians and established what could be the first link between music expertise and advantages in long-term memory.
"Musically trained people are known to process linguistic materials a split second faster than those without training, and previous research also has shown musicians have advantages in working memory," says Heekyeong Park, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Arlington.
Using electroencephalography (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) technologies, Dr. Park and graduate student James Schaeffer measured electrical activity of neurons in the brains of 29 participants, of which 14 were musicians, each with at least 15 years of experience.
They tested their working memory using pictures and verbal items and later asked participants to state whether each item was new or if it had been part of the material in the first round of experimentation as a test of long-term memory.
"What we wanted to know is whether there are differences between pictorial and verbal tasks and whether any advantages extend to long-term memory," says Park. "If proven, those advantages could represent an intervention option to explore for people with cognitive challenges."
Scans from the imaging technologies used suggested that musicians process responses in the frontal and parietal lobes differently from non-musicians.
The musicians outperformed their non-musical counterparts in both pictorial and verbal tasks that concerned working memory, for EEG readings suggested they had faster neural responses.
When it came down to long-term memory, scans showed the musicians had the edge over non-musicians only in the pictorial category.
The team presented their findings on this week at Neuroscience 2014, the international meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, in Washington DC.
