Resilience mechanisms can be dynamically triggered throughout the lifecourse by resilience factors in order to prevent individuals from developing stress-related pathologies such as posttraumatic ...stress disorder (PTSD). Some interventional studies have suggested that listening to music and musical practice
after
experiencing a traumatic event decrease the intensity of PTSD, but surprisingly, no study to our knowledge has explored musical experience as a potential resilience factor
before
the potential occurrence of a traumatic event. In the present conceptual analysis, we sought to summarize what is known about the concept of resilience and how musical experience could trigger two key mechanisms altered in PTSD: emotion regulation and cognitive control. Our hypothesis is that the stimulation of these two mechanisms by musical experience during the pre-traumatic period could help protect against the symptoms of emotional dysregulation and intrusions present in PTSD. We then developed a new framework to guide future research aimed at isolating and investigating the protective role of musical experience regarding the development of PTSD in response to trauma. The clinical application of this type of research could be to develop pre-trauma training that promotes emotional regulation and cognitive control, aimed at populations at risk of developing PTSD such as healthcare workers, police officers, and military staffs.
The effects of musical practice on cognition are well established yet rarely compared with other kinds of artistic training or expertise. This study aims to compare the possible effect of musical and ...theatre regular practice on cognition across the lifespan. Both of these artistic activities require many hours of individual or collective training in order to reach an advanced level. This process requires the interaction between higher-order cognitive functions and several sensory modalities (auditory, verbal, visual and motor), as well as regular learning of new pieces. This study included participants with musical or theatre training, and healthy controls matched for age (18 to 84 years old) and education. The objective was to determine whether specific expertise in these activities had an effect on cognition across the lifespan, and a protective influence against undesirable cognitive outcomes associated with aging. All participants underwent a battery of cognitive tasks that evaluated processing speed, executive function, fluency, working memory, verbal and visual long-term memories, and non-verbal reasoning abilities. Results showed that music and theatre artistic practices were strongly associated with cognitive enhancements. Participants with musical training were better in executive functioning, working memory and non-verbal reasoning, whereas participants with regular acting practice had better long-term verbal memory and fluency performance. Thus, taken together, results suggest a differential effect of these artistic practices on cognition across the lifespan. Advanced age did not seem to reduce the benefit, so future studies should focus on the hypothetical protective effects of artistic practice against cognitive decline.
•Motor, cognitive and musical expertise is associated with resting-state functional changes within various brain networks.•There is currently no clear pattern of results that would single out a ...specific neural signature of general expertise.•The variability of findings might be explained by different settings of resting-state and various methods of analyses.
Brain activity and structure are shaped by life experiences. This plasticity has often been demonstrated with different types of expertise by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG). Experts showed domain-specific functional neural changes during completion of a task when compared to non-experts. However, all of these results are task-dependent and even though they have proven useful for understanding neural interactions and their direct relation to individual skill, studying brain plasticity without any task might provide complementary information about functional cerebral reorganization due to expertise at the whole-brain level and might facilitate comparison across studies. Resting-state functional MRI and EEG makes it possible to explore the functional traces of expertise in the brain by measuring temporal correlations of blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) and spontaneous neural activity fluctuations at rest. Since these correlations are thought to reflect a prior history co-activation of brain regions, we propose reviewing studies that focused on the effects of expertise in the motor, cognitive and musical domains on brain plasticity at rest, to determine whether there is a domain-specific neural signature of expertise. After highlighting expertise-related changes within resting-state networks for each domain, we discuss their specificity to the trained activity and the methodological considerations concerning different conditions and analyses used between studies.
The aim of this study was to explore whether musical practice-related gray matter increases in brain regions are accompanied by modifications in their resting-state functional connectivity. 16 young ...musically experienced adults and 17 matched nonmusicians underwent an anatomical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and a resting-state functional MRI (rsfMRI). A whole-brain two-sample t test run on the T1-weighted structural images revealed four clusters exhibiting significant increases in gray matter (GM) volume in the musician group, located within the right posterior and middle cingulate gyrus, left superior temporal gyrus and right inferior orbitofrontal gyrus. Each cluster was used as a seed region to generate and compare whole-brain resting-state functional connectivity maps. The two clusters within the cingulate gyrus exhibited greater connectivity for musicians with the right prefrontal cortex and left temporal pole, which play a role in autobiographical and semantic memory, respectively. The cluster in the left superior temporal gyrus displayed enhanced connectivity with several language-related areas (e.g., left premotor cortex, bilateral supramarginal gyri). Finally, the cluster in the right inferior frontal gyrus displayed more synchronous activity at rest with claustrum, areas thought to play a role in binding sensory and motor information. We interpreted these findings as the consequence of repeated collaborative use in general networks supporting some of the memory, perceptual-motor and emotional features of musical practice.
•Musical practice shapes the brain structurally, mainly in auditory and motor areas.•Musical practice is also accompanied by functional plasticity.•We linked these two forms of brain plasticity using seed-based approach of rsfMRI.•Only musicians show more gray matter volume and enhanced functional connectivity.•Musical practice modulates brain networks implicated in high cognitive functions.
The development of musical skills by musicians results in specific structural and functional modifications in the brain. Surprisingly, no functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study has ...investigated the impact of musical training on brain function during long-term memory retrieval, a faculty particularly important in music. Thus, using fMRI, we examined for the first time this process during a musical familiarity task (i.e., semantic memory for music). Musical expertise induced supplementary activations in the hippocampus, medial frontal gyrus, and superior temporal areas on both sides, suggesting a constant interaction between episodic and semantic memory during this task in musicians. In addition, a voxel-based morphometry (VBM) investigation was performed within these areas and revealed that gray matter density of the hippocampus was higher in musicians than in nonmusicians. Our data indicate that musical expertise critically modifies long-term memory processes and induces structural and functional plasticity in the hippocampus.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The hippocampus has classically been associated with episodic memory, but is sometimes also recruited during semantic memory tasks, especially for the skilled exploration of familiar information. ...Cognitive control mechanisms guiding semantic memory search may benefit from the set of cognitive processes at stake during musical training. Here, we examined using functional magnetic resonance imaging, whether musical expertise would promote the top-down control of the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) over the generation of hippocampally based goal-directed thoughts mediating the familiarity judgment of proverbs and musical items. Analyses of behavioral data confirmed that musical experts more efficiently access familiar melodies than non-musicians although such increased ability did not transfer to verbal semantic memory. At the brain level, musical expertise specifically enhanced the recruitment of the hippocampus during semantic access to melodies, but not proverbs. Additionally, hippocampal activation contributed to speed of access to familiar melodies, but only in musicians. Critically, causal modeling of neural dynamics between LIFG and the hippocampus further showed that top-down excitatory regulation over the hippocampus during familiarity decision specifically increases with musical expertise - an effect that generalized across melodies and proverbs. At the local level, our data show that musical expertise modulates the online recruitment of hippocampal response to serve semantic memory retrieval of familiar melodies. The reconfiguration of memory network dynamics following musical training could constitute a promising framework to understand its ability to preserve brain functions.
Despite severe amnesia, some studies showed that Alzheimer Disease (AD) patients with moderate to severe dementia keep a consistent, but impoverished representation of themselves, showing ...preservation of the sense of identity even at severe stages of the illness. Some studies suggest that listening to music can facilitate the reminiscence of autobiographical memories and that stimulating autobiographical memory would be relevant to support the self of these patients. Consequently, we hypothesized that repeated participation to reminiscence workshops, using excerpts of familiar songs as prompts would participate to the enrichment of autobiographical memories, self-representation and sense of identity. We included a group of 20 AD patients with severe dementia residing in nursing homes. Their performances were compared to a control group of 20 matched (age, education, mood) healthy residents living in the same institutions. The experiment was conducted in three phases over a 2-week period. On phase 1, an individual assessment of sense of identity was proposed to each participant. On phase 2, participants joined musical reminiscence workshops (six sessions over 2 weeks for AD patients and 3 sessions over a week for controls). During the third phase (12 days after the first assessment), individual evaluation of autobiographical memory and a second assessment of sense of identity were proposed. Our results showed that, despite their massive amnesia syndrome, autobiographical memories of AD reached at the end of the 2 weeks the number and quality of those of matched controls. Moreover, we confirmed a continuity of self-representation in AD patients with a stable profile of the answers between the first and second individual assessments of sense of identity. However, the increase in number and episodic quality of autobiographical memories was not accompanied by an enrichment of the sense of identity. In a complementary study, new patients participated in the same paradigm, but using movie extracts as prompts, and showed very similar effects. We discuss all of these results with regard to the literature showing the significant impact of repetition on the reactivation of memory traces even in very amnestic AD patients at severe stages of the disease.
: Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Korsakoff's syndrome (KS) are two major neurocognitive disorders characterized by amnesia but AD is degenerative while KS is not. The objective is to compare regional ...volume deficits within the Papez circuit in AD and KS, considering AD progression.
: 18 KS patients, 40 AD patients (20 with Moderate AD (MAD) matched on global cognitive deficits with KS patients and 20 with Severe AD (SAD)), and 70 healthy controls underwent structural MRI. Volumes of the hippocampi, thalami, cingulate gyri, mammillary bodies (MB) and mammillothalamic tracts (MTT) were extracted.
: For the cingulate gyri, and anterior thalamic nuclei, all patient groups were affected compared to controls but did not differ between each other. Smaller volumes were observed in all patient groups compared to controls in the mediodorsal thalamic nuclei and MB, but these regions were more severely damaged in KS than AD. MTT volumes were damaged in KS only. Hippocampi were affected in all patient groups but more severely in the SAD than in the KS and MAD.
: There are commonalities in the pattern of volume deficits in KS and AD within the Papez circuit with the anterior thalamic nuclei, cingulate cortex and hippocampus (in MAD only) being damaged to the same extent. The specificity of KS relies on the alteration of the MTT and the severity of the MB shrinkage. Further comparative studies including other imaging modalities and a neuropsychological assessment are required.
Because of permanent use-dependent brain plasticity, all lifelong individuals' experiences are believed to influence the cognitive aging quality. In older individuals, both former and current musical ...practices have been associated with better verbal skills, visual memory, processing speed, and planning function. This work sought for an interaction between musical practice and cognitive aging by comparing musician and non-musician individuals for two lifetime periods (middle and late adulthood). Long-term memory, auditory-verbal short-term memory, processing speed, non-verbal reasoning, and verbal fluencies were assessed. In Study 1, measures of processing speed and auditory-verbal short-term memory were significantly better performed by musicians compared with controls, but both groups displayed the same age-related differences. For verbal fluencies, musicians scored higher than controls and displayed different age effects. In Study 2, we found that lifetime period at training onset (childhood vs. adulthood) was associated with phonemic, but not semantic, fluency performances (musicians who had started to practice in adulthood did not perform better on phonemic fluency than non-musicians). Current frequency of training did not account for musicians' scores on either of these two measures. These patterns of results are discussed by setting the hypothesis of a transformative effect of musical practice against a non-causal explanation.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
Advances in functional neuroimaging studies have led to the need for improved anatomical precision to face with more and more specific challenges. Nevertheless, ...functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) (fMRI) suffers from geometrical distortions, which limit the matching between functional and anatomical data necessary to interpret fMRI results. The “FieldMap” method is the most widely used technique to correct for geometrical distortions but in some cases cannot be applied or provides unsatisfactory results. The objective of this study is thus to provide a very simple alternative method for distortion correction and to demonstrate its efficiency.
METHODS
This correction relies on the nonlinear registration of echo‐planar imaging (EPI) acquisitions onto their corresponding undistorted non‐EPI T2 Star volume, and was tested on two independent groups of subjects undertaking the same paradigm but scanned with distinct EPI sequences.
RESULTS
This procedure was found to considerably decrease the mismatch between functional and anatomical data in both groups, as revealed through several quantitative and qualitative measures on both EPI volumes and activation maps.
CONCLUSION
This study describes a simple, rapid, and easily implementable method to significantly improve neuroanatomical accuracy of fMRI results localization, which may be relevant for future neuroimaging studies.
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