Strategies for Tonal and Atonal Musical Interpretation in Blind and Normally Sighted Children: an FMRI Study

Introduction: Early childhood is known to be a period when cortical plasticity phenomena are at a maximum. Music is a stimulus known to modulate these mechanisms. On the other hand, neurological impairments like blindness are also known to affect cortical plasticity. Here, we address how tonal and atonal musical stimuli are processed in control and blind young children. We aimed to understand the differences between the two groups when processing this physiological information.

Results: Atonal stimuli produced larger activations in cerebellum, fusiform, and temporal lobe structures than tonal. In contrast, tonal stimuli induced larger frontal lobe representations than atonal. Control participants presented large activations in cerebellum, fusiform, and temporal lobe. A correlation/connectivity study showed that the blind group incorporated larger amounts of perceptual information (somatosensory and motor) into tonal processing through the function of the anterior prefrontal cortex (APC). They also used the visual cortex in conjunction with the Wernicke's area to process this information. In contrast, controls processed sound with perceptual stimuli from auditory cortex structures (including Wernicke's area). In this case, information was processed through the dorsal posterior cingulate cortex and not the APC. The orbitofrontal cortex also played a key role for atonal interpretation in this group.

Discussion: Wernicke's area, known to be involved in speech, was heavily involved for both groups and all stimuli. The two groups presented clear differences in strategies for music processing, with very different recruitment of brain regions.