Interoception and the musical brain: Evidence from cross-sectional and longitudinal behavioural and resting-state fMRI study

Abstract

Musical training has been linked to enhanced interoceptive abilities and increased resting-state (RS) functional connectivity (FC) within the interoceptive brain network. We aimed to replicate and extend these findings with a unique cross-sectional and longitudinal study design. Professional musicians and matched individuals with no prior musical experience (training group) were recruited. Participants underwent RS fMRI scans and completed heartbeat counting and discrimination tasks outside of the scanner (time point 1). The training group additionally had RS scans and interoception tests repeated after a 6-month-long keyboard course training (time point 2). We found no evidence for increased interoceptive abilities in professional musicians relative to non-musicians, nor did we observe any improvements in interoception over the course of musical training. RS FC analysis revealed increased FC within the sensorimotor network in professional musicians compared to the training group at the first time point with no change in FC over time in the Training group. These findings challenge the view that musical training may improve interoceptive abilities. Yet, the results suggest that musical training is related to increased communication within the sensorimotor RS network, which consists of some hubs important for interoceptive processing (namely pre- and postcentral gyri and supplementary motor area).

Understanding functional brain reorganization for naturalistic piano playing in novice pianists

“…Although recruiting a control group was not feasible due to task design in the current study, in a recent resting‐state connectivity study (Herman et al., 2023), we documented that the functional connectivity did not change between or within any of the brain networks in the training group during the whole study period. This may suggest that the differences in brain activity observed in previous task‐based fMRI studies might reflect the salience of the stimuli and not a difference in their sensory processing.…”

“…Therefore, we were not able to investigate any changes within the first week of training, or perform a comparison to a control group. Yet, in a previous paper, we have compared the resting‐state functional connectivity patterns of the novice pianists training group with that of trained pianists (Herman et al., 2023). We showed that no measurable changes in interoceptive ability or resting‐state connectivity occurred within the study timeframe.…”