Abstract

Introduction:Attentionandworkingmemoryarekeycognitivefunctionsthatallowustoselectandmaintaininformationinourmindforashorttime,beingessentialforourdailylifeand,inparticular,forlearningandacademicperformance.Ithasbeenshownthatmusicaltrainingcanimproveworkingmemoryperformance,butitisstillunclearifandhowtheneuralmechanismsofworkingmemoryandparticularlyattentionareimplicatedinthisprocess.Inthiswork,weaimedtoidentifytheoscillatorysignatureofbimodalattentionandworkingmemorythatcontributestoimprovedworkingmemoryinmusicallytrainedchildren.Materials and methods: We recruited children with and without musical trainingandaskedthemtocompleteabimodal(auditory/visual)attentionandworkingmem-ory task, whereas their brain activity was measured using electroencephalography.Behavioral,time–frequency,andsourcereconstructionanalysesweremade.Results:Resultsshowedthat,overall,musicallytrainedchildrenperformedbetteronthe task than children without musical training. When comparing musically trainedchildren with children withoutmusical training, we foundmodulationsin the alphabandpre-stimulionsetandthebeginningofstimulionsetinthefrontalandparietalregions.Thesecorrelatedwithcorrectresponsestotheattendedmodality.Moreover,duringtheendphaseofstimulipresentation,wefoundmodulationscorrelatingwithcorrectresponsesindependentofattentionconditioninthethetaandalphabands,intheleftfrontalandrightparietalregions.Conclusions:Theseresultssuggestthatmusicallytrainedchildrenhaveimprovedneu-ronal mechanisms for both attention allocation and memory encoding. Our resultscanbeimportantfordevelopinginterventionsforpeoplewithattentionandworkingmemorydifficulties.