Effects of Musical Training in Young Children: From Brain Plasticity to Rehabilitation

Scientists and educators have created training methods and technologies to improve mental health and validate the effectiveness of education programs. Several studies have found direct benefits in various cognitive domains that are the target of training using these new technologies. However, few studies have demonstrated broad transfer from training to performance on untrained cognitive activities. The current hypothesis in this research field is that broad transfer occurs when the novel and trained tasks recruit overlapping processing components and engage shared brain regions. Music and language constitute one example where cognitive activities share processes as well as brain structures. Our work uses this music/language research paradigm to understand transfer processing between cognitive activities. Over the last 6 years, we have studied the influence of musical training on behavior and brain functional plasticity. In this talk, I will present four longitudinal studies (with different training technologies, intensity and duration) which investigate the transfer between cognitive activities and address different theories concerning the anatomical organization of the brain. These studies have shown that transfer of skills is possible at a lower level of cognition (i.e., acoustic level of cognition) but also at a higher level of cognition (i.e., intelligence and executive function). The results also demonstrate the high degree of brain plasticity in early childhood showing that relatively short periods of training have intense consequences on the functional organization of the children’s brain.

Speaker: Dr. Sylvain Moreno, York University and Rotman Research Institute, Toronto

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