Efeito do treinamento musical em capacidades cognitivas visuais: atenção e memória

Abstract

Recognition of the influence of music on cerebral function has incited neuroscientists and musicians to investigate the connections between these two areas since the 1990s. Many studies have demonstrated structural and functional cerebral neuroplastic processes as a result of long-term musical practice, which in turn may produce cognitive differences between musicians and non-musicians. We aimed to investigate if intensive musical training could be associated with improved visual cognitive abilities: visual attention ability, on three different modalities selective, divided and sustained attention and visual memory ability. Musicians (n = 38), permanent members of two major Brazilian orchestras, and non-musicians (n = 38), professionals and students from several fields, matched on age, gender and education, were submitted to five neuropsychological tests: three visual attention tests, one visual memory test and one simple reaction time test, which measured reaction time and accuracy. Musicians showed better performance relative to non-musicians on four variables of the three visual attention tests, involving reaction time and accuracy, and on three variables of the visual memory test, involving only reaction time. Such advantage could not be explained by better sensorimotor integration, since there was no difference between groups in the simple reaction time test. Moreover, significant correlations between variables related to musical experience as age of beginning of musical studies and daily individual instrumental practice and some variables of visual attention and visual memory tests were verified. Our results mainly suggest augmented visual attention ability, on different modalities, in musicians. The better performance of musicians in the visual memory test may also indicate greater efficiency of attentional processes, since differences were observed only on reaction times. This study may contribute to demonstrate possible cognitive benefits of long-term musical training.