Abstract

The possibility that music training improves nonmusical abilities generates a lot of excitement among scientists, the media, and the public. Longitudinal evidence is inconclusive, however, and the advantages of musicians in correlational studies could stem from preexisting factors. In this talk, I will present a series of correlational and longitudinal studies asking whether music training improves linguistic and emotion recognition skills. Correlational data confirm an advantage for musically trained children and adults on these domains, but a similar advantage is apparent for musically untrained individuals with naturally good musical abilities. Moreover, longitudinal data reveal no evidence for a causal relationship. Based on these findings and on a broader review of existing evidence, I will argue that observed associations between music training and nonmusical abilities are more likely to stem from preexisting musical abilities than they are from training. I will discuss the implications of this view for current debates on plasticity and transfer of learning.

Biography

César Lima is an Associate Professor with Habilitation in the Department of Psychology at Iscte – University Institute of Lisbon. His research focuses on the psychology and neuroscience of music, voice and emotion (MUVE Lab). He addresses these topics by combining experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience approaches, in healthy individuals of all ages, in specialised populations (e.g., musicians), and in clinical populations (e.g., with neurological disorders). 

He has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles in journals including Emotion Review, Cerebral Cortex, Brain, Current Biology, Trends in Neurosciences, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, and Annual Review of Psychology. César Lima is on the Editorial Board of Scientific Reports (category Neuroscience) and Royal Society Open Science (category Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience). Before joining ISCTE, César Lima completed his Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Porto (2011), was a Research Associate at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience – University College London (2012-2016), and a Senior Research Associate at the University of Porto (2016-2017). His work as principal investigator has been funded by the British Academy and by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology.