Fine motor control improves in older adults after 1 year of piano lessons: Analysis of individual development and its coupling with cognition and brain structure

Worschech, Florian; James, Clara E.; Jünemann, Kristin; Sinke, Christopher; Krüger, Tillmann H. C.; Scholz, Daniel S.; Kliegel, Matthias; Marié, Damien; Altenmüller, Eckart · 2023 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.1111/ejn.16031

archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified

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Summary

This study investigates whether one year of piano training improves fine motor control in older adults and how these motor changes relate to cognitive function and brain structure. Motivated by the need to understand the longitudinal coupling between motor and cognitive domains during skill acquisition, the researchers aimed to determine if musical training could counteract age-related declines in hand function and whether improvements in motor skills co-develop with cognitive abilities and neurophysiological parameters. The research utilized a randomized controlled trial involving 156 healthy, musically naïve older adults (mean age 69.7 years) from Hanover and Geneva. Participants were randomly assigned to either a piano playing group (PiPl, N=82) or a music listening/control group (MuCu, N=74). Both groups attended weekly 60-minute sessions for 12 months. Assessments of fine motor skills (using the Purdue Pegboard test), auditory working memory (Digit Span Backward), and processing speed (Digit Symbol test), along with MRI scans, were conducted at baseline, 6 months, and 12 months. The analysis employed Bayesian multilevel modeling to examine group differences and dual change score models to analyze the longitudinal coupling between motor, cognitive, and neurophysiological variables, accounting for individual differences and baseline performance. The results demonstrated that piano practice led to greater improvements in fine motor skills compared to the music listening group. There was also probable improvement in working memory for the piano group. Crucially, the study found that in the piano group only, unimanual fine motor skills and the grey matter volume of the contralateral primary motor cortex (M1) changed together during the 6–12 month period. Additionally, M1 co-developed with the ipsilateral putamen and thalamus. While piano playing induced more prevalent coupling between motor and cognitive domains, there was little evidence that fine motor control developed concurrently with cognitive functions. The relationships between motor acuity and cognition were bidirectional, explained by common causes and shared resources with compensatory mechanisms. The significance of these findings lies in the demonstration that musical training promotes motor, cognitive, and neural development in older age. The consolidation of piano skills appears to occur within sensorimotor networks, enabling musicians to perform untrained motor tasks with higher acuity. This suggests that engaging in complex motor learning like piano playing can induce plasticity in motor-related brain regions and improve functional independence, offering a potential intervention to mitigate age-related motor decline.

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• automaticity skill acquisition