Musical training, bilingualism, and executive function: a closer look at task switching and dual-task performance.

This study investigated whether musical training and bilingualism are associated with enhancements in specific components of executive function, namely, task switching and dual-task performance. Participants (n = 153) belonging to one of four groups (monolingual musician, bilingual musician, bilingual non-musician, or monolingual non-musician) were matched on age and socioeconomic status and administered task switching and dual-task paradigms. Results demonstrated reduced global and local switch costs in musicians compared with non-musicians, suggesting that musical training can contribute to increased efficiency in the ability to shift flexibly between mental sets.

How macaques view familiarity and gaze in conspecific faces.

The pattern of visual fixations on an image depends not only on the image content but also on the viewer's disposition and on the function (or pathology) of underlying neural circuitry. For example, human viewers display changes in viewing patterns toward face images that differ in gaze direction or in the viewer's familiarity with the face. Macaques share many face processing abilities with humans, and their neural circuitry is used to understand perception across species, yet their viewing responses to gaze and familiarity of faces is poorly understood.