Theta Coherence Asymmetry in the Dorsal Stream of Musicians Facilitates Word Learning

Stefan Elmer (1) , Joëlle Albrecht (1) , Seyed Abolfazl Valizadeh (1, 2) , Clément François (3, 4, 5) , Antoni Rodríguez-Fornells (3, 6, 7)

1 UZH - Universität Zürich [Zürich] = University of Zurich
2 ETH Zürich - Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology [Zürich]
3 Cognition and Brain Plasticity Unit
4 Department of Cognition, Development and Educational Psychology [Barcelona, Spain]
5 Institut de Recerca Pediàtrica Hospital Sant Joan de Déu [Barcelona, Spain]
6 University of Barcelona
7 ICREA - Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats = Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies

Word learning constitutes a human faculty which is dependent upon two anatomically distinct processing streams projecting from posterior superior temporal (pST) and inferior parietal (IP) brain regions toward the prefrontal cortex (dorsal stream) and the temporal pole (ventral stream). The ventral stream is involved in mapping sensory and phonological information onto lexical-semantic representations, whereas the dorsal stream contributes to sound-to-motor mapping, articulation, complex sequencing in the verbal domain, and to how verbal information is encoded, stored, and rehearsed from memory. In the present source-based EEG study, we evaluated functional connectivity between the IP lobe and Broca's area while musicians and non-musicians learned pseudowords presented in the form of concatenated auditory streams. Behavioral results demonstrated that musicians outperformed non-musicians, as reflected by a higher sensitivity index (d'). This behavioral superiority was paralleled by increased left-hemispheric theta coherence in the dorsal stream, whereas non-musicians showed stronger functional connectivity in the right hemisphere. Since no between-group differences were observed in a passive listening control condition nor during rest, results point to a task-specific intertwining between musical expertise, functional connectivity, and word learning.

Domaines: Neurosciences; Psychologie; Linguistique

Stefan Elmer, Joëlle Albrecht, Seyed Abolfazl Valizadeh, Clément François, Antoni Rodríguez-Fornells. Theta Coherence Asymmetry in the Dorsal Stream of Musicians Facilitates Word Learning. Scientific Reports, 2018, 8, pp.4565. ⟨10.1038/s41598-018-22942-1⟩. ⟨hal-02062420⟩