A neuroimaging comparative study of changes in a cellist’s brain when playing contemporary and Baroque styles
Graphical abstract
Introduction
Contemporary music styles (CM) create new aesthetic ideas, languages, new performance techniques and sound concepts, among others. In addition to these innovations, 20th century composers experimented with musical/harmonic languages far beyond the traditional Western tonal system, an issue that has been critically and historically analyzed from a musicology perspective (Dahlhaus, 1967, Dahlhaus, 1990). An essential feature in some CM styles is the absence of tonal hierarchy (hence atonal music) compared to regulated tonal music (TM) developed until the early 20th century through preceding styles.
Various factors are considered by the authors to intervene in the processing of the musician's brain during TM and CM styles interpretation: the presence or absence of notated rhythm and tonality, the different instrumental performance techniques and the learning and training period dedicated to TM and CM in their studies and professional life. A noteworthy issue raised by such changing styles is whether being subjected to a dominant musical language from birth creates a perception bias: for instance, for a Westerner, traditional tonal music would be favoured over other harmonic languages. This phenomenon may be relevant when comparing tonal and atonal musical interpretation. Different authors (Krumhansl & Cuddy, 2010) support the phenomenon known as enculturation (Imberty, 1969). Enculturation occurs in passive or non-expert listeners as well as in music students. A clear example is found in musical studies, in general, in the West, where musical education is based on works written in tonal language, while CM styles are not usually included in a methodological form during the learning music process from the earliest stages but in the later stages of musical learning. In addition, CM is present in the music scene but it does not present the same diffusion of the previous styles in broadcast channels and audiences.
Musicians begin their music training at an early age which continues throughout their life, and as such they develop technical and musical interpretation skills that are reflected in the structure and function of certain brain regions (Schlaug, 2001, Sittiprapaporn, 2012, Zatorre, Chen, & Penhune, 2007). There are numerous studies on this issue performed with neuroimaging techniques such as fMRI and signal analysis techniques (EEG and EMG). An example of this is found in keyboard players (MRI morphometric analysis) where it appears that the later musical training starts, the shorter the intramural length of the precentral gyrus (Amunts et al., 1997). Furthermore, musically trained children show greater activation in areas related to executive functions like pre- supplementary motor area while performing a task (Zuk et al, 2014). Likewise, in trained pianists, there is a decrease in the activation volume of the fronto-parietal network accompanied increased activation of the primary motor cortex (Jäncke et al., 2000) and a voxel-based morphometry analysis (MRI) has shown greater neuroplasticity in musicians with more experience and early training (Vaquero et al., 2016). A different approach (musical listening tasks), reported modifications in the activity in auditory and sensorimotor cortical areas in musicians versus non-musicians (Bangert and Schlaug, 2006). Different works in this research field have analyzed the interpreter from the perspective of musical training and brain neuroplasticity (Wan and Schlaug, 2010, Zatorre, 2005, Herholz and Zatorre, 2012). Research related to musical training has also been conducted with the analysis of functional connectivity (FC) between brain regions using fMRI procedures. An auditory-motor FC enhancement in relation to music training has been found in a study in musicians and non-musicians (Zatorre et al., 2007) suggesting an association between auditory-motor FC and music training in the interpreter. In addition, musicians seem to have stronger FC between the primary auditory cortex and the primary motor cortex (Luo et al., 2012), and greater FC between the insular cortex and other regions (Zamorano et al., 2017). The parietal operculum in musicians has also been suggested as a connecting concentrator linking the auditory, somatosensory and cortical motor areas (Tanaka & Kirino, 2019). Another study, using whole-brain graph-theory analyzed the subject’s fMRI responses, reported different connectivity patterns between musician interpreters and non-musicians while listening to music (Alluri et al., 2017). There are few works on encephalic responses (in the fMRI context) in non-resting conditions, i.e., while performing music. A search of the literature found only one study on performing cellists which described, during a task of interpretation, an activation of various motor, temporal-auditory and cerebellum regions, and also, the existence of FC between auditory areas and dorsal motor and pre-motor areas (Segado et al., 2018). However, there are no works in the literature on encephalic activity/responses during the performance of different musical styles and, in particular, on the interpretation of different concert styles of CM developed since the middle of the 20th century.
The aim of this work is to investigate the possible analogies and differences between CM and TM using the encephalic controls involved in the interpretation of musical excerpts in these styles. The authors’ working hypothesis is that those analogies and/or discrepancies are a consequence of the different languages/concepts and performance techniques used in both styles as well as the time dedicated by the musicians to their professional learning and their training. In the present work, the musical instrument selected is the cello and the interpretation excerpts were performed by expert cellists. fMRI analysis of encephalic regions of interest (ROI) was used to demonstrate the above hypothesis. The ROIs neural activity and, the functional connectivity between them was computed by appropriate techniques and ad-hoc software. These procedures were carried out with data obtained during the interpretation (by an adapted cello inside an MR scanner) of an excerpt of Baroque music and another excerpt of Contemporary music by expert cellists.
Section snippets
Participants
The participants were 13 healthy right-handed professional cellists (confirmed by the Edinburgh questionnaire) of a mean age of 36.1 years old (SD = 6.6) (6 males and 7 females) without previous history of neurological or psychiatric disorders. All participants had begun musical training at the age of 6–7 years old with the official curriculum of Spanish conservatories; having studied without interruption and completed their training when they were between 18 and 20 years old and are currently
Theory and calculation
Interpretation of contemporary music may involve brain functions that are not trained by exposure to traditional repertoire. That is why it would be convenient to know comparatively during the interpretation of a Contemporary musical extract which areas of the brain are activated or connected to each other in relation to previous tonal musical styles. This study should be extended to other musical styles as well as to other musicians.
In relation to the calculation, we need to know the areas of
Functional activity from BOLD-contrast imaging
From the SnPM analysis, clusters whose activity exceeded statistical thresholds established (FWE-corrected p < 0.05) in the two contrasts analyzed [B > R and C > R] are shown in Table 1. Table 1 shows the peak MNI coordinate [XYZ], the peak intensity (T) and the number of voxels (k) of each of the clusters and brain regions as well as the related Brodmann brain areas (BA). The common regions of both contrasts are shown in Table 2. Fig. 3 shows brain coronal sections made for comparative
Common features in the interpretation of both styles
The fMRI results show that right-handed expert musicians playing the cello triggers the BOLD activity of the frontal motor areas [PreCG (BA4)] and parietal sensory areas [PostCG (BA2-3), IPG, SMG (BA40) and SPG (BA5-7)] and cerebellum regions regardless of the musical styles performed. As regards the body movements (head, trunk, legs, arms, elbow, wrist and fingers) involved in playing the cello, the results found agree with many works related with motor and sensory brain involvement during
Conclusions
The present work demonstrates using fMRI activation and seed-based connectivity maps that musicians require and use different encephalic neural networks during the interpretation of different concert music styles. These differences concern motor, sensory, auditory, executive functions and connectivity between some of these. This work could be of interest in different fields of knowledge e.g., in musicology to understand, from an experimental point of view, the global impact of musical styles;
Limitations
The study here has, in the authors’ opinion, several limitations, among which the following should be mentioned: 1) It concerns differences in brain and cerebellum responses in the interpretation of two concert music styles: one Baroque and another Contemporary. The Baroque tonal style can be stylistically considered representative and the contemporary excerpt incorporates features that appear in Contemporary music styles. Obviously new music has developed styles which incorporate other
Declaration of competing interest
The Authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Prof. J.L. González Mora (ULL SEGAI Director) for his kind collaboration with imaging analysis procedures. This research was partially supported by the Ayudas para Grupos Consolidados of the University of La Laguna (Spain). We would also like to acknowledge the participating cellists: P. Hernández, C. Hernández, Mª.J. Santapau, E. Solanes, C. Trujillo, K. Balfe, J. Piñol, J. Domenech, T. Cantallops, J.E. Bouché, M. Calvo for their altruistic collaboration.
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