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Different neural activities support auditory working memory in musicians and bilinguals
Author(s) -
Alain Claude,
Khatamian Yasha,
He Yu,
Lee Yunjo,
Moreno Sylvain,
Leung Ada W. S.,
Bialystok Ellen
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
annals of the new york academy of sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.712
H-Index - 248
eISSN - 1749-6632
pISSN - 0077-8923
DOI - 10.1111/nyas.13717
Subject(s) - psychology , functional magnetic resonance imaging , supramarginal gyrus , working memory , cognitive psychology , dorsolateral prefrontal cortex , auditory cortex , neuroscience of multilingualism , audiology , prefrontal cortex , inferior frontal gyrus , superior temporal gyrus , task (project management) , neural correlates of consciousness , brain activity and meditation , neuroscience , cognition , electroencephalography , medicine , management , economics
Musical training and bilingualism benefit executive functioning and working memory (WM)—however, the brain networks supporting this advantage are not well specified. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging and the n ‐back task to assess WM for spatial (sound location) and nonspatial (sound category) auditory information in musician monolingual (musicians), nonmusician bilinguals (bilinguals), and nonmusician monolinguals (controls). Musicians outperformed bilinguals and controls on the nonspatial WM task. Overall, spatial and nonspatial WM were associated with greater activity in dorsal and ventral brain regions, respectively. Increasing WM load yielded similar recruitment of the anterior‐posterior attention network in all three groups. In both tasks and both levels of difficulty, musicians showed lower brain activity than controls in superior prefrontal frontal gyrus and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) bilaterally, a finding that may reflect improved and more efficient use of neural resources. Bilinguals showed enhanced activity in language‐related areas (i.e., left DLPFC and left supramarginal gyrus) relative to musicians and controls, which could be associated with the need to suppress interference associated with competing semantic activations from multiple languages. These findings indicate that the auditory WM advantage in musicians and bilinguals is mediated by different neural networks specific to each life experience.