Better late than never (or early): Music training in late childhood is associated with enhanced decision-making.

ABSTRACT: Decision-making is critical to everyday life. Here we ask: to what extent does music training benefit decision-making? Supported by strong associations between music training and enhanced cross-domain skills, we hypothesize that musicians may show decision-making advantages relative to non-musicians. Prior work has also argued for a "critical period" for cross-domain plasticity such that beginning music training early enhances sensorimotor brain regions that mature early in life. Given that brain regions supporting decision-making begin maturing late in childhood, we hypothesized that an advantage in decision-making may only be present in musicians who began music training later in childhood. To test this hypothesis, young adults who began music training before and after 8 years of age (ea

SUBMITTER: Smayda KE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8356733 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature