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Updated: Nov 20, 2025
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Musical Expertise Shapes Functional and Structural Brain Networks Independent of Absolute Pitch Ability
Simon Leipold1,2, Carina Klein3, Lutz Jäncke1,4
1Division of Neuropsychology, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland leipold@stanford.edu lutz.jaencke@uzh.ch.
Summary
Long-term musical training robustly alters brain networks, impacting both functional and structural connectivity. This study found no significant effect of absolute pitch on these brain networks in the largest sample to date.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Science
- Music Psychology
Background:
- Professional musicians serve as a key model for studying experience-dependent brain plasticity.
- Previous research on musicianship and absolute pitch effects on brain networks yielded inconsistent findings due to small sample sizes and varied methodologies.
- Absolute pitch (AP) is a rare ability to identify or name musical notes without a reference tone.
Purpose of the Study:
- To comprehensively assess the effects of musicianship and absolute pitch on intrinsic functional and structural brain connectivity.
- To investigate these effects in the largest sample of human participants to date using multimodal assessments.
- To clarify the impact of long-term musical training versus the specific talent of absolute pitch on large-scale brain networks.
Main Methods:
- Recruited 153 participants: 52 with absolute pitch, 51 without absolute pitch, and 50 non-musicians.
- Conducted a multimodal assessment of intrinsic functional and structural connectivity.
- Employed a variety of commonly used and state-of-the-art multivariate analysis methods.
Main Results:
- Robust effects of musicianship were observed in both interhemispheric and intrahemispheric connectivity across structural and functional networks.
- These musicianship effects were replicable in both absolute pitch and non-absolute pitch musicians compared to non-musicians.
- No significant evidence for an effect of absolute pitch on intrinsic functional or structural connectivity was found; both musician groups exhibited similar networks.
Conclusions:
- Long-term musical training is strongly associated with significant and robust alterations in large-scale brain networks.
- The specific talent of absolute pitch does not appear to significantly influence intrinsic functional or structural connectivity based on current data.
- Subtle effects of absolute pitch on neural networks may require larger sample sizes or task-based experimental designs for detection.
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