title: Cognitive flexibility modulates maturation and music-training-related changes in neural sound discrimination.
abstract: Previous research has demonstrated that musicians show superior neural sound discrimination when compared to non-musicians, and that these changes emerge with accumulation of training. Our aim was to investigate whether individual differences in executive functions predict training-related changes in neural sound discrimination. We measured event-related potentials induced by sound changes coupled with tests for executive functions in musically trained and non-trained children aged 9-11 years and 13-15 years. High performance in a set-shifting task, indexing cognitive flexibility, was linked to enhanced maturation of neural sound discrimination in both musically trained and non-trained children. Specifically, well-performing musically trained children already showed large mismatch negativity (MMN) responses at a young age as well as at an older age, indicating accurate sound discrimination. In contrast, the musically trained low-performing children still showed an increase in MMN amplitude with age, suggesting that they were behind their high-performing peers in the development of sound discrimination. In the non-trained group, in turn, only the high-performing children showed evidence of an age-related increase in MMN amplitude, and the low-performing children showed a small MMN with no age-related change. These latter results suggest an advantage in MMN development also for high-performing non-trained individuals. For the P3a amplitude, there was an age-related increase only in the children who performed well in the set-shifting task, irrespective of music training, indicating enhanced attention-related processes in these children. Thus, the current study provides the first evidence that, in children, cognitive flexibility may influence age-related and training-related plasticity of neural sound discrimination.
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Cognitive Science, Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, PO Box 9, FI-00014, Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: Katri
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Saarikivi
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Cognitive Science, Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, PO Box 9, FI-00014, Helsinki, Finland.|Department of Music, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland.
authors.forename: Vesa
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Putkinen
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Cognitive Science, Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, PO Box 9, FI-00014, Helsinki, Finland.|CICERO Learning, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: Mari
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tervaniemi
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Cognitive Science, Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, PO Box 9, FI-00014, Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: Minna
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Huotilainen
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001921:Brain / Q000254:growth & development* / Q000502:physiology; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009146:Music; D010897:Pitch Discrimination
keywords: childhood; executive functions; maturation; mismatch negativity; music training