Effects of Lifelong Musicianship on White Matter Integrity and Cognitive Brain Reserve.

There is a significant body of research that has identified specific, high-end cognitive demand activities and lifestyles that may play a role in building cognitive brain reserve, including volume changes in gray matter and white matter, increased structural connectivity, and enhanced categorical perception. While normal aging produces trends of decreasing white matter (WM) integrity, research on cognitive brain reserve suggests that complex sensory-motor activities across the life span may slow down or reverse these trends. Previous research has focused on structural and functional changes to the human brain caused by training and experience in both linguistic (especially bilingualism) and musical domains.

L2 speech perception in noise: An fMRI study of advanced Spanish learners.

This experiment examined the neural correlates of second language (L2) speech perception in noise in advanced Spanish students. Participants completed a speech perception task in quiet and noise in their first language (L1 = English) and L2 during fMRI. Behavioral tests of L2 Spanish sentence recognition confirmed that advanced learners of Spanish can recognize sentences in quiet and in noise with an average of 85.