Auditory neuroplasticity in the adult musical brain

就听觉皮质的大小和功能而言，专业音乐家的大脑与非音乐家的大脑不同。在神经科学领域，这些差异在多大程度上代表了高强度音乐训练的结果，还是与生俱来的倾向，仍然是一个有争议的问题。我们的研究旨在结合横断面和纵向设计来评估听觉神经可塑性。巴塞尔音乐大学的优秀音乐学生将在为期三年的大学强化培训计划中接受监控，所有学习参与者都将遵循相同的教育时间表。一种独特的新方法组合被用来建立由心理声学、形态和神经功能参数组成的个人听觉特征。这些轮廓的变化和时间动态将在四个时间点进行评估，从而能够区分可能对训练诱导的可塑性敏感的变量。这项拟议的工作有望深入了解听觉学习和行为的性格因素和训练诱导因素之间的相互作用，并从更广泛的角度为先天与后天的辩论做出有价值的贡献。研究结果可能对音乐教育的各个方面有直接的影响，例如学习和职业策略的适应，并有可能扩展到成人神经可塑性的其他领域。

Brains of professional musicians are different from those of non-musicians in terms of size andfunctionality of their auditory cortex. To which extent these differences represent the result of intense musical training or are attributable to an innate predisposition remains a matter of controversy in the field of neuroscience. Our study aims to evaluate auditory neuroplasticity in a combined crosssectional and longitudinal design. Highly talented musical students of the Basle University of Music will be monitored during a three year intensive university training program, where all study participants will follow the same educational schedule. A unique combination of novel methods is used to establish individual auditory profiles consisting of psychoacoustic, morphological and neurofunctional parameters. Changes and temporal dynamics of these profiles will be assessed at four time points enabling discrimination of variables that are potentially susceptible to training-induced plasticity. The proposed work is expected to provide insight into the interactions between dispositional and traininginduced factors of auditory learning and behavior, and in the broader perspective to make a valuable contribution to the nature versus nurture debate. Results may have direct implications for aspects of musical education, e. g. adaptation of learning and career strategies, and the potential to be extended to other domains of adult neuroplasticity.