Musical expertise is related to altered functional connectivity during audiovisual integration

Abstract

The present study investigated the cortical large-scale functional network underpinning audiovisual integration via magnetoencephalographic recordings. The reorganization of this network related to long-term musical training was investigated by comparing musicians to nonmusicians. Connectivity was calculated on the basis of the estimated mutual information of the sources' activity, and the corresponding networks were statistically compared. Nonmusicians' results indicated that the cortical network associated with audiovisual integration supports visuospatial processing and attentional shifting, whereas a sparser network, related to spatial awareness supports the identification of audiovisual incongruences. In contrast, musicians' results showed enhanced connectivity in regions related to the identification of auditory pattern violations. Hence, nonmusicians rely on the processing of visual clues for the integration of audiovisual information, whereas musicians rely mostly on the corresponding auditory information. The large-scale cortical network underpinning multisensory integration is reorganized due to expertise in a cognitive domain that largely involves audiovisual integration, indicating long-term training-related neuroplasticity.functional connectivity | MEG | multisensory integration | cortical plasticity | musical training M ultisensory integration is of such importance for our understanding of the surrounding world that its cortical correlates interact with most of the neocortical regions, including the ones traditionally considered as unisensory (1). The cortical areas that are usually referred to as multisensory include the superior temporal sulcus, the intraparietal sulcus, and the frontal cortex (2). Nevertheless, recent evidence suggests that multisensory perception engages more widespread areas than what the classic modular approaches have so far assumed (1). Moreover, audiovisual integration emerges from a dynamic interplay of distributed regions operating in large-scale networks (3).The amount of shared information within these large-scale networks of distributed neuronal groups conceptualizes the notion of functional connectivity (4). Recent methodological advances allow the identification of networks that emerge from whole-brain analyses of neuroimaging data such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) (5) and provide fertile ground for studying the functional connectivity patterns of higher cognitive processes. These kinds of networks are modeled as graphs composed of nodes, which represent the cortical areas contributing to the network, and by edges, which represent the connections between the nodes. Each network has specific attributes that quantify connectivity organization (6). These graphs depict the functional connectome of the respective cognitive processes. Recent evidence suggests that functional connectivity networks may be reorganized by factors mediating neuroplasticity such as learning and development (7), altering information processing ...

Improvising at Rest: Differentiating Jazz and Classical Music Training with Resting State Functional Connectivity

“…Furthermore, superior temporal lobe structures in musicians showed different connectivity patterns from MMT controls: Classical musicians had significant connectivity from RECN to bilateral temporal pole which was not seen in the other two groups, whereas Improvisational musicians had higher connectivity than MMT controls between vDMN seed and left temporal pole, precuneus network seed and left temporal pole, and primary visual network seed and left middle and inferior temporal gyri. The latter is consistent with magnetoencephalography work showing that musicians have more densely connected cortical network that enables audiovisual integration (Paraskevopoulos et. al., 2015).…”

Musicians have enhanced audiovisual multisensory binding: experience-dependent effects in the double-flash illusion

“…Unfortunately, we are aware of no study to date which has examined potential music-induced differences in brain connectivity between primary auditory and visual brain regions that would presumably mediate the doubleflash illusion (cf. Paraskevopoulos et al 2015). However, in musically lay individuals, prior studies have indicated that the likelihood of perceiving the double-flash illusion is highly correlated with white matter connectivity between occipito-parietal regions, the putative ventral/dorsal streams comprising the "what/where" pathways (Kaposvari et al 2015).…”

Increased functional connectivity in the ventral and dorsal streams during retrieval of novel words in professional musicians

“…In this study, we compared novel word learning in musicians and nonmusicians by using three concatenated tasks that are dependent upon a variety of perceptual and cognitive functions typically involved in both music and language processing (Dittinger et al, 2016). Based on previous evidence pointing to an optimization of perceptual discrimination (Chobert et al, 2014;Marie et al, 2011), short-term and working memory (George & Coch, 2011;Schulze & Koelsch, 2012), executive functions (Zuk et al, 2014), and audiovisual integration (Bidelman, 2016;Paraskevopoulos, Kraneburg, Herholz, Bamidis, & Pantev, 2015) in musicians, we predicted that the musicians' advantage in word learning would translate into increased EEG-based functional connectivity along the ventral-and dorsal processing streams. Results consistently revealed increased beta coherence in the ventral compared to the dorsal stream during both the "matching-" and "semantic tasks."…”