Plasticity of the neuro-auditory network in musically trained adolescents II

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Peter Schneider
• Subject Area: Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience
• Term: from 2016 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 289946203

The investigation of plastic changes of the musical brain from childhood to adulthood is a great challenge. Besides studies that included subjects in the age of childhood, up to date no neurological longitudinal study has been conducted with adolescents to investigate the relationship between musicality and brain maturation. Systematic neuroscientific longitudinal studies are necessary, however, in order to disentangle the interplay between maturational, learning-induced and predispositional factors.During the first period of my Heisenberg Fellowship programme we succeeded to complete the 4th measurement timepoint as part of the previously conducted longitudinal study “Audio and neuroplasticity and musical learning” (2009-2015), including three preceding follow-up measurements with elementary school children (age range 7-12). Based on the longlasting contact and high motivation of the families it was possible to gain ~90% of the previous 220 subjects in puberty age (13-17 years) to participate one more time in the psychoacoustic, magnetencephalographic and magnetic resonance tomographic measurements at the University Hospital of Heidelberg. The currently available results corroborate that playing an instrument actively just in the age of puberty counteracts hearing deficits as well as developmental and learning disorders such as AD(H)D or dyslexia. An essential potential of these results lies in an objective, brain based early diagnostic of developmental disorders. It is an issue of the present proposal to conduct a 5th follow-up measurement including all previous investigated participants at the age of young adulthood (19-20 years). This will allow to analyse the matuartion and plasticity of the observed individual neuro-auditory profiles in a never before attained lifetime period of 12 years from elemantary school age until adulthood. The focus is on specific markers of natural maturation and training-induced plasticity by musical practice, that should be compared between musically gifted subjects, non-musicians and participants with developmental and learning disorders. Comprehensive analyses should be performed to understand the relationship between the development and / or stability of hearing functions, sound processing in the auditory cortex and associated brain networks as well as exceptional musically skills and auditory dysfunctions. This approach is expected to succeed in explaining neural foundations of both outstanding auditory skills and auditory dysfunctions, with considerable potential for hearing-therapeutical, diagnostical and musicpedagogical applications.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants