The rewards of musical interactions - Psychological and neural evidence

Elvira Brattico

Centre for Music in the brain, Aarhus University

Learning to play a tune on a musical instrument can be highly rewarding, especially when this learning is experienced together with others. In this talk, I will present two studies with over 150 preadolescent children showing how the rewards of collective music training have psychological benefits, such as executive functions and self-regulation in health and in neurodevelopmental disorders. Moreover, by means of our recent neuroimaging study with preadolescents, I will discuss the role of musical reward on brain connectivity and on learning in the developmental age.