Impact of more than three years of Carnatic music training on the working memory: an ERP study

Abstract Objective The impact of music training on development of various cognitive domains are extensively studied and established, however, the mechanism underlying such phenomenon is still unknown. In the present study, the role of more than three years of Carnatic music (a form of Indian music) training on working memory (WM) was tested using an event related potential (ERP) and a standard WM test. Method A total of 30 individuals comprised of 15 singers of age range between 16–30 years (M = 23 ± 3.2 years) and 15 non-singers aged between 16–30 years (M = 24 ± 2.9 years) participated in this study. These singers had overall 3 to 5 years of formal Carnatic music training experience. Short-term auditory working memory was assessed using Forward and backward digit span task and it was administered using the APEX software. Cortical activities such as attention, discrimination, and memory were testedusing P300and test was performed using Intelligent Hearing System. Results The results revealed that the mean P300 amplitude of singers (M = 5.80, SD = 2.09) was significantly higher compared to the non-singer (M = 3.50, SD = 1.44), t(25)=3.3, p < .05. The Mann-Whitney U-Test was administered and a significant difference between singers and non-singers (|z| = 3.135, p < .05) was observed for digit backward task. However, for digit forward test no significant difference (|z| = 1.523, p > .05) was obtained. Conclusion Findings of this study suggests that more than three years of Carnatic singing experience can enhance the neural coding to discriminate subtle differences leading to enhance working memory capacity.