Short-Term Plasticity of the Motor System Induced by Piano Learning

Ido Tavor¹, Rotem Botvinik¹, Yaniv Assaf¹

Diffusion MRI was recently shown to be sensitive to short term neuroplasticity in spatial learning. While spatial learning is expected to cause structural changes in limbic structures, the neuroplasticity aspects in higher cognitive domains are not straightforward. Thus in the current study we used DTI in order to investigate the neuroplasticity that accompanies motor learning. Non-musician subjects were scanned before and after a motor sequence learning task based on an electric piano keyboard. We found learning related changes in diffusion properties in motor system regions, suggesting that DTI can follow on short-term learning-related brain plasticity of an entire cognitive domain.