title: Musical minds: attentional blink reveals modality-specific restrictions.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Formal musical training is known to have positive effects on attentional and executive functioning, processing speed, and working memory. Consequently, one may expect to find differences in the dynamics of temporal attention between musicians and non-musicians. Here we address the question whether that is indeed the case, and whether any beneficial effects of musical training on temporal attention are modality specific or generalize across sensory modalities.
  
  
  RESULTS
  When two targets are presented in close temporal succession, most people fail to report the second target, a phenomenon known as the attentional blink (AB). We measured and compared AB magnitude for musicians and non-musicians using auditory or visually presented letters and digits. Relative to non-musicians, the auditory AB was both attenuated and delayed in musicians, whereas the visual AB was larger. Non-musicians with a large auditory AB tended to show a large visual AB. However, neither a positive nor negative correlation was found in musicians, suggesting that at least in musicians, attentional restrictions within each modality are completely separate.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  AB magnitude within one modality can generalize to another modality, but this turns out not to be the case for every individual. Formal musical training seems to have a domain-general, but modality-specific beneficial effect on selective attention. The results fit with the idea that a major source of attentional restriction as reflected in the AB lies in modality-specific, independent sensory systems rather than a central amodal system. The findings demonstrate that individual differences in AB magnitude can provide important information about the modular structure of human cognition.
authors.affiliation: Neuroimaging Center, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands; Department of Neuroscience, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Sander
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Martens
authors.affiliation: Neuroimaging Center, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands; Department of Neuroscience, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands; Institute of Artificial Intelligence, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Stefan M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Wierda
authors.affiliation: Neuroimaging Center, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Mathijs
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dun
authors.affiliation: Neuroimaging Center, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands; Institute of Artificial Intelligence, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Michal
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: de Vries
authors.affiliation: Neuroimaging Center, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Henderikus G O M
authors.initials: HG
authors.lastname: Smid
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D054518:Attentional Blink; D003071:Cognition; D006801:Humans; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D009146:Music; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D055815:Young Adult