1 Centre for Research in Human Development and Department of Psychology, Concordia University, 7141 Sherbrooke Street West, Montréal H4B 1R6, Canada. Electronic address: LHBaer@gmail.com.
2 Kimel Family Translational Imaging-Genetics Laboratory, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 250 College Street, Toronto M5T 1R8, Canada.
3 Centre for Research in Human Development and Department of Psychology, Concordia University, 7141 Sherbrooke Street West, Montréal H4B 1R6, Canada.
4 Kimel Family Translational Imaging-Genetics Laboratory, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 250 College Street, Toronto M5T 1R8, Canada; Department of Psychiatry and Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, University of Toronto, 27 King's College Circle, Toronto M5S 1A1, Canada.
5 Centre for Research in Human Development and Department of Psychology, Concordia University, 7141 Sherbrooke Street West, Montréal H4B 1R6, Canada; International Laboratory for Brain, Music, and Sound Research, 1430 Mont Royal Boulevard, Montréal H2V 4P3, Canada.

Regional cerebellar volumes are related to early musical training and finger tapping performance.

Neuroimage. 2015 Apr 01;109:130-9

Authors: Baer LH, Park MT, Bailey JA, Chakravarty MM, Li KZ, Penhune VB

Abstract

The cerebellum has been associated with timing on the millisecond scale and with musical rhythm and beat processing. Early musical training (before age 7) is associated with enhanced rhythm synchronization performance and differences in cortical motor areas and the corpus callosum. In the present study, we examined the relationships between regional cerebellar volumes, early musical training, and timing performance. We tested adult musicians and non-musicians on a standard finger tapping task, and extracted cerebellar gray and white matter volumes using a novel multi-atlas automatic segmentation pipeline. We found that early-trained musicians had reduced volume in bilateral cerebellar white matter and right lobules IV, V and VI, compared to late-trained musicians. Strikingly, better timing performance, greater musical experience and an earlier age of start of musical training were associated with smaller cerebellar volumes. Better timing performance was specifically associated with smaller volumes of right lobule VI. Collectively, these findings support the sensitivity of the cerebellum to the age of initiation of musical training and suggest that lobule VI plays a role in timing. The smaller cerebellar volumes associated with musical training and timing performance may be a reflection of more efficiently implemented low-level timing and sensorimotor processes.

PMID: 25583606 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]