title: Musical ability is associated with enhanced auditory and visual cognitive processing.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Musical ability has always been linked to enhanced cognitive and intellectual skills. We were interested in the relation between musical ability and short-time cognitive processing as measured by event-related potentials, in particular in visual processing, since previous studies have already suggested such a link for acoustic cognitive processing. We measured auditory and visual event-related potentials as elicited by an oddball paradigm in 20 healthy subjects (10 musicians and 10 non-musicians; 10 female; mean age 24 ± 2 years). In addition, the Seashore test and a test developed by the authors to detect relevant amusia, the latter one with a high ceiling effect, were also applied.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The most important finding was that there is a significant linear correlation between musical ability as measured by these tests and the P3 latencies of both the auditory and visual event-related potentials. Furthermore, musicians showed shorter latencies of the event-related potentials than non-musicians.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We conclude that musical ability as measured by neuropsychological tests is associated with improved short-time cognitive processing both in the auditory and, surprisingly, also in the visual domain.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, University of Münster, Münster, Germany.
authors.forename: Caroline
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Faßhauer
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, University of Münster, Münster, Germany.|Academy of Manual Medicine, Münster, Germany.
authors.forename: Achim
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Frese
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, University of Münster, Münster, Germany. everss@uni-muenster.de.|Department of Neurology, Krankenhaus Lindenbrunn, Lindenbrunn 1, 31863, Coppenbrügge, Germany. everss@uni-muenster.de.
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Evers
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009146:Music; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011361:Professional Competence; D011594:Psychometrics; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult