This is the start of our ambitious team research project on the impacts of singing and music practice on brain aging! We call this project PICCOLO from the French “Projet de recherche sur les effets de la Pratique d’un Instrument ou du Chant sur la COgnition, le Langage et l’Organisation cérébrale”.

This major project follows our recent study on the effects of singing on the brain during aging. The PICCOLO project aims to examine whether different forms of musical activities have similar or different effects on the brain. These effects will be compared to those generated by the practice of complex, non-musical activities, defined as (non-aerobic) activities that involve body movements and cognition.

Are musical activities “special”? We will find out by analyzing the linguistic, auditory, cognitive, and emotional abilities of 150 singers, musicians, and people engaged in complex non-musical activities and by linking these data to the structure (gray and white matter) and function of their brain at rest and during language tasks using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

A “team” project? YES! Pascale Tremblay, director of our laboratory at the CERVO Research Center, obtained funding from the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Nature et technologies (FRQNT) in 2018 to develop this complex research project! The FRQNT is a non-profit organization established under the Act respecting the Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur, de la Recherche, de la Science et de la Technologie. The FRQNT supports research in the broad fields of natural sciences and engineering.

The project team includes professors from four faculties at Université Laval (Faculty of Medicine, Faculty of Music, Faculty of Social Sciences, and Faculty of Arts and Humanities) as well as researchers from other universities (Sherbrooke, Concordia, and the GIPSA Lab in France). A former master’s student from the laboratory, Élisabeth Maillard, added her medical expertise to the project for a while to the project, and has now completed her master degree!

This project is “interdisciplinary” due to the team leading it, but also because it encompasses several fields of research:

  • Cognitive neuroscience, which focuses on the neurobiological mechanisms underlying cognition (e.g., perception, language, emotions)
  • Music
  • Linguistics, for the characterization of language phenomena associated with aging
  • Geriatrics, the study of aging
  • Rehabilitation sciences, which aim to understand the biological mechanisms that cause physical or mental disabilities, or that contribute to the recovery of these functions.

Stay tuned for updates about this project!

 

Project team members:

Pascale Tremblay, Ph.D.: Lab director, Full Professor in the Department of Rehabilitation, Université Laval. Expertise: Cognitive neuroscience, multimodal neuroimaging, language, aging.

Johanna-Pascale Roy, Ph.D.: Associate Professor in the Department of Languages, Linguistics, and Translation, Université Laval. Expertise: Phonetics.

Philip Jackson, Ph.D.: Full Professor in the School of Psychiatry, Université Laval. Expertise: Emotions, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

Virginia Penhune, Ph.D.: Full Professor in the Department of Psychology, Concordia University. Expertise: Motor learning and brain plasticity, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Josée Vaillancourt, Ph.D.: Associate Professor in the Faculty of Music, Université Laval. Expertise: Singing.

Maxime Descoteaux, Ph.D.: Full Professor in the Department of Computer Science, Université de Sherbrooke. Expertise: White matter imaging.

Alexandre Sicard, M.Sc., Doctoral student in the lab. Interested in the effect of age and musical experience on brain structure.

Xiyez Zhang, M.Sc., Doctoral student in the lab. Interested in the effect of age and musical experience on brain function.

Élisabeth Maillard, M.D.: Former master’s student in the laboratory, Université Laval. Physician, interested in clinical interventions using music and the arts.

Anna Marczyk, Ph.D.: collaborator, former postdoc at Université de Grenoble. Expertise: Phonetics.

To learn more

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