1. Zatorre paper Presented by MaryKate Chester
Predispositions and Plasticity in Music and Speech Learning: Neural Correlates and Implications
Zatorre paper Presented by MaryKate Chester

2. Presentation Overview
Why I chose this topic. Why is it interesting?
Plasticity
Grey and White Matter
Anatomy and Function
Experiments
Causality and Studies
Overview

3. Why is this interesting?
Music, language, and understanding
Background in musical training
Previous classes in terms of plasticity
Phantom limb theory
Experience dependent?

4. Plasticity What is plasticity?
The ability of the brain to modify its own structure and function following changes within the body or in the external environment
Cross over between music and language structures?
Primary motor cortex, broca’s area, auditory cortices, and more

5. What is grey matter? Composed of: Importance:
Nueronal cell bodies, unmyelinated axons, glial cells
Importance:
Processes signal->directs stimuli->induce response
Glial cells found in grey matter influences function and communication
Cortical thickness correlation patterns suggest more focused organization between auditory cortical and inferior frontal cortex
Critical for auditory processing
Working memory

6. What is White Matter? Composed of: Importance:
Long-range myelinated axons, few neuronal cell bodies
Importance:
Myelin tissue aids in improving transmission, connects different regions of grey matter to each other
White matter features in left temporoparietal regions and in left auditory cortex are associated with faster learning

7. Anatomical Features
Cross-sectional studies of musicians consistently show changes in auditory and motor cortical regions in:
Grey matter volume
Concentration
Cortical thickness
Organization of related white matter pathways
Implications?
Implies musical training can effect changes at the anatomical level

8. What sorts of brain features predict people will perform better?
Bigger auditory cortex = better at pitch-perception
Better white matter in Broca’s area = better at speaking foreign language
More grey matter = indicative of task performance, better working memory
White matter organization in left inferior frontal regions is also predictive of the ability to articulate speech sounds from a foreing langauge and is associated with enhanced performance in an artificial grammar task
Gray matter features are predictive of task performance on certain pitch tasks such that better performance is associated with greater concentration or thickness in a pitch-sensitive region of auditory cortex

9. White matter and language connections

11. Functional Brain Activation Patterns
Electrical and Magnetic Responses
Enhanced fidelity of frequency encoding in musically trained individuals
See if a particular frequency (pitch) can match with something in brain which oscillates at same frequency
Slide frequency and see if oscillation matches it
Cross-sectional studies of musical training have shown that electrical and magnetic responses from auditory cortex are enhanced as a function of training

12. Experiment 1: Music
Had listeners learn over 2-week period to distinguish tonal patterns using microtonal pitch intervals
Some were able to learn faster while others more gradually
Those who learned faster went on to learn quickly and had significantly steeper functions than the later learners
Faster learns could be thought of as having a finer-grained encoding of pitch information

13. Experiment 2: Language
Same thing can be mirrored in some extent in speech
Some speech contrasts are difficult to learn in adulthood
Explicit training with novel speech sounds show effects comparable to those using musical training
Some are better able to learn than others
Difficult to learn in adulthood if not in native phonetic language

14. Connecting the Two
Those better able to learn a nonnative speech contrast showed higher levels of functional connectivity between key components of a language-relevant network
This effects the areas that are seen as connected between music and language
Seen both in short and long term training

15. Other Experiments
Babies look longer at happy faces when presented with music judged as “happy” by adults
Nawrot 2003
Babies look at happy faces when spoken to in a higher pitch or “friendlier” utterance

16. Causality? Evidence in favor of experience-dependent effects
magnitude of the change typically correlated with age of commencement
Stronger evidence from longitudinal studies
Longitudinal: which have demonstrated that after training both in children and adults there are clear changes in auditory cortical evoke responses and in the brainstem

17. Longitudinal Studies
Show changes in cortical morphology in both auditory and motor regions among children who received musical training
In speech domain there have been demonstrations that brain morphology is related to linguistic experience

18. Overall Thoughts
This paper made some valid points about changes in brain matter and its affects
It does make some general statements that can create confusion
There are seemingly always too many factors that can account for musicality