ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neurosci.
Sec. Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnins.2025.1649733
This article is part of the Research TopicNetworked Music Perception and ProductionView all 4 articles
Differences in dynamic functional connectivity between musicians and non-musicians during naturalistic music listening
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of History and Ethnology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
- 2Department of Translational Biomedicine and Neuroscience, Universita degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy
- 3Center for Music in the Brain (MIB), Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus Universitet, Aarhus, Denmark
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Introduction:Based on tens of neuroimaging studies and a meta-analysis, we know that music expertise is associated with increases in brain volume and activity in structures related to audition, action, and various cognitive functions. What is less known is how music expertise affects the brain's functional connectivity during music listening. Methods: A novel algorithm, Leading Eigenvector Dynamic Analysis, was used to extract the specific dynamic patterns and the corresponding transition process during a naturalistic free-listening paradigm between 18 musicians and 18 non-musicians. Results: We found a brain state involving the frontal, orbitofrontal, parietal, and anterior cingulate cortex, associated with higher cognitive functions, emotional regulation, and reward, to be more recurrent in musicians during music listening compared to non-musicians. Transition processes revealed heightened engagement in areas linked to auditory processing, somatosensory integration, cognitive function, and emotional regulation in musicians. This enhanced dynamic connectivity might be linked to musicians' ability to integrate complex auditory stimuli and derive emotional meaning from them. Non-musicians, conversely, showed a tendency to engage more with the default mode network during music listening, possibly in relation to self-relevant mental processes and connection with personal experiences while being absorbed with the music. Discussion: These findings highlight how music expertise shapes functional connectivity dynamics, musicians enhancing sensorimotor-cognitive integration and non-musicians relying on emotion and personal engagement.
Keywords: naturalistic music listening1, dynamic functional connectivity2, functional magneticresonance imaging3, musical expertise4, neuroplasticity5
Received: 18 Jun 2025; Accepted: 22 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Dai, Toiviainen, Campo and Brattico. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Petri Toiviainen, ptoiviai@jyu.fi
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