Effects of Music Training on Inhibitory Control and Associated Neural Networks in School-Aged Children: A Longitudinal Study (2019)

Inhibitory control, the ability to suppress an immediate dominant response, has been shown to predict academic and career success, social emotional wellbeing, wealth, and physical health. Learning to play a musical instrument engages various sensorimotor processes and draws on cognitive capacities including inhibition and task switching. While music training has been shown to benefit cognitive and language skills.

This passage explores inhibitory control, a key component of executive function tied to the brain’s prefrontal cortex. Inhibitory control helps suppress automatic responses, improving focus and decision-making, which is linked to areas such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and inferior frontal gyrus. Studies show that strong inhibitory control correlates with academic and career success, better social emotional health, and lower risks of substance abuse and physical health issues.

The passage reviews how programs that enhance inhibitory control (like mindfulness, exercise, and music training) improve these skills, especially in children. Some research points to short-term exercise, martial arts, and classroom-based programs helping develop inhibitory control. More recently, music training has been examined for its role in improving this function.

However, studies on the effects of music training on inhibitory control have produced mixed results, both for adults and children. While some studies found that musicians showed improved reaction times in tasks that require inhibition, others did not find significant differences. Various factors may explain these inconsistent results, such as differing definitions of “musician” and the type of music training programs. The need for studies with more socio-economic and cultural diversity is also emphasized.

The current study aims to investigate the long-term effects of music training on inhibitory control in children, comparing those with music training to those involved in sports and those without any structured extracurricular activity. The study  hypothesised that music-trained children will show greater behavioural and neural improvements in inhibitory control than other groups.

This study investigated the impact of group-based music training on inhibitory skills in children from under-resourced communities, using a four-year longitudinal design. It compared children involved in music training with those in sports and a control group (no structured after-school program). Children’s inhibitory control was assessed using tasks like delayed gratification and the Flanker task, both inside and outside an MRI scanner.

Key findings include:

1. Flanker Task: Music-trained children showed gradual improvement in inhibiting dominant responses, especially after 3-4 years. Though all groups improved, only the music group’s accuracy in incongruent trials reached significant levels, suggesting a unique effect of music training. Overall, all groups had similar accuracy by year four, though music participants started slightly lower at year two, suggesting they had more to gain.
2. Delayed Gratification: Music-trained children were faster in learning to delay smaller immediate rewards for larger future ones, showing enhanced rational decision-making compared to the other groups. The sports and control groups also improved but did so at a slower rate.
3. Neural Correlates: In the fMRI Stroop task, the music group displayed accelerated neural maturity in brain areas associated with cognitive control, particularly the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). This trend aligned with faster reaction times in musicians seen in other studies, though differences between groups diminished by year four.

This study suggests that music training promotes earlier development of inhibitory control, possibly due to parallels with musical practice (example: error monitoring and attention to detail). Interestingly the correlation with the high percentage of bilingual children in the study,  suggests that both music training and bilingualism independently contribute to enhanced inhibitory skills.

A limitation was the decrease in sample size over the four years, and the study wasn’t randomised, so pre-existing differences between groups might have influenced the results. Despite this, the study offers evidence of music training’s modest but positive effects on inhibitory control in children from underserved communities.

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2019.01080/full