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Musical Expertise and Executive Functions in Experienced Musicians

Extensive music practice has been suggested to enhance the development of cognitive abilities over and above musical expertise. Executive functions (EFs) have been particularly investigated, given their generalizability across different domains and their crucial role in almost all aspects of cogniti...

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Autores principales: Passarotto, Edoardo, Kopp, Bruno, Lee, André, Altenmüller, Eckart
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10296278/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37371386
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci13060908
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author Passarotto, Edoardo
Kopp, Bruno
Lee, André
Altenmüller, Eckart
author_facet Passarotto, Edoardo
Kopp, Bruno
Lee, André
Altenmüller, Eckart
author_sort Passarotto, Edoardo
collection PubMed
description Extensive music practice has been suggested to enhance the development of cognitive abilities over and above musical expertise. Executive functions (EFs) have been particularly investigated, given their generalizability across different domains and their crucial role in almost all aspects of cognition. However, the relationship between musical expertise and EFs is still not completely understood, as several studies have reported conflicting results. The present study aims to investigate the relationship between musical expertise and EFs, determining which facets—if any—of EFs might be particularly relevant to extensive music practice. Thirty-five student pianists completed a set of neuropsychological tasks which assessed EFs (the Trail Making Task, Design Fluency, Numerical Stroop, and the Tower of London). They also performed a short musical excerpt inspired by the piano literature. Musical expertise was assessed by considering three parameters, namely the highest academic degree in music, the lifetime amount of music practice, and the quality of the sample-based musical performance. The results indicate that postgraduate piano students did not show advantages in EFs compared to undergraduate piano students. More extensive lifetime practice in music was solely associated with faster visual reaction times on the Numerical Stroop task. The Trail Making and Design Fluency scores were significant predictors of the quality of the sample-based musical performance. In conclusion, the present data suggests that EFs and the amount of music practice do not seem to be correlated in student pianists. Nevertheless, some facets of EFs and the quality of musical performance may share substantial amounts of variance.
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spelling pubmed-102962782023-06-28 Musical Expertise and Executive Functions in Experienced Musicians Passarotto, Edoardo Kopp, Bruno Lee, André Altenmüller, Eckart Brain Sci Article Extensive music practice has been suggested to enhance the development of cognitive abilities over and above musical expertise. Executive functions (EFs) have been particularly investigated, given their generalizability across different domains and their crucial role in almost all aspects of cognition. However, the relationship between musical expertise and EFs is still not completely understood, as several studies have reported conflicting results. The present study aims to investigate the relationship between musical expertise and EFs, determining which facets—if any—of EFs might be particularly relevant to extensive music practice. Thirty-five student pianists completed a set of neuropsychological tasks which assessed EFs (the Trail Making Task, Design Fluency, Numerical Stroop, and the Tower of London). They also performed a short musical excerpt inspired by the piano literature. Musical expertise was assessed by considering three parameters, namely the highest academic degree in music, the lifetime amount of music practice, and the quality of the sample-based musical performance. The results indicate that postgraduate piano students did not show advantages in EFs compared to undergraduate piano students. More extensive lifetime practice in music was solely associated with faster visual reaction times on the Numerical Stroop task. The Trail Making and Design Fluency scores were significant predictors of the quality of the sample-based musical performance. In conclusion, the present data suggests that EFs and the amount of music practice do not seem to be correlated in student pianists. Nevertheless, some facets of EFs and the quality of musical performance may share substantial amounts of variance. MDPI 2023-06-04 /pmc/articles/PMC10296278/ /pubmed/37371386 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci13060908 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Passarotto, Edoardo
Kopp, Bruno
Lee, André
Altenmüller, Eckart
Musical Expertise and Executive Functions in Experienced Musicians
title Musical Expertise and Executive Functions in Experienced Musicians
title_full Musical Expertise and Executive Functions in Experienced Musicians
title_fullStr Musical Expertise and Executive Functions in Experienced Musicians
title_full_unstemmed Musical Expertise and Executive Functions in Experienced Musicians
title_short Musical Expertise and Executive Functions in Experienced Musicians
title_sort musical expertise and executive functions in experienced musicians
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10296278/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37371386
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci13060908
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