The human aptitude for music is a fascinating and complex phenomenon that has stimulated scientific interest for decades. In an attempt to analyse the neurobiological basis of musical abilities, many researchers have focused on individual differences in the structure and function of specific brain areas, such as the auditory areas for sound analysis. However, this approach, aimed at correlating variations in isolated brain regions with the diversity of musical skills in human populations, has produced unsatisfactory results that are difficult to replicate.

A recent study, a collaboration between the Department of Human Neuroscience of Sapienza University of Rome and the Department of Clinical Medicine at Aarhus University in Denmark, published in the journal Nature Communications, took an innovative approach. Instead of focusing on individual brain areas, the team examined the organisation of connectivity between these regions, i.e. how different parts of the brain communicate with each other.

By analysing brain images together with cognitive and musical data from a large sample of over 200 individuals, the researchers reconstructed brain connectivity networks. Using graph theory - a mathematical method that studies the properties of networks - they discovered a significant relationship between musical abilities and the organisation of a network connecting the frontal and parietal regions of the brain, known to play a crucial role in working memory. Minute differences in the organisation of our brains could manifest themselves as variations in musical behaviour. These differences, amplified through cultural transmission, could contribute to the diversity of musical traditions we observe in various human cultures.

“We observed”, says Massimo Lumaca of Aarhus University, “that the ability of a specific frontal region to communicate effectively with other areas of the brain network is significantly associated with both working memory performance and musical competence. This suggests that the neural mechanisms underlying musicality are not isolated to the musical domain, but involve general cognitive processes used in various contexts”.

“This is a first step towards a multidisciplinary picture of human music”, says Andrea Ravignani of Sapienza University. “In addition to centuries of research in the human sciences on music, our findings offer a complementary perspective on what it means biologically to make or perceive music”.

The research opens up new perspectives in the study of the biological foundations of human musicality and its variability across individuals and cultures. Furthermore, these findings could have important practical applications in areas such as music education and neurotherapy and guide the development of targeted interventions using brain stimulation techniques to enhance musical skills or improve cognitive functions.

References:

Frontoparietal network topology as a neural marker of musical perceptual abilities - Lumaca, M., Keller, P.E., Baggio, G., Pando-Naude, V., Bajada, C.J., Martinez, M.A., Hansen, J.H., Ravignani, A., Joe, N., Vuust, P. and Vulić, K. - Nature Communications 2024 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-52479-z 

Further Information

Andrea Ravignani
Department of Human Neuroscience
andrea.ravignani@uniroma1.it