Investigating the Effect of Music on Spatial Learning in a Virtual Reality Task

Spatial learning and navigation is a fundamental cognitive ability consisting of multiple cognitive components. Despite intensive efforts conducted with the assistance of virtual reality technology and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) modality, the music effect on this cognition and the involved neuronal mechanisms remain elusive.

We aimed to investigate the effect of familiarity with music on human’s spatial learning performance in a goal-directed virtual-navigation task combined with an fMRI study.

Healthy adult participants were navigated using fMRI-compatible equipment within a 3D virtual maze developed with the MazeSuite application. This measure was taken to learn the environment and find the position of hidden objects. The fMRI data were obtained, processed, and analyzed to map the brain activity and identify the differences in the Blood Oxygen Level Dependent (BOLD) activity between the research groups during searching and finding phases. Both behavioral and image analysis were outperformed in this research. Besides, three T-contrasts were defined to compare the activity patterns between the study groups. The selected music was Mozart sonata owing to its known facilitating impact on cognition.

The obtained data indicated that those who have heard music prior to the test had a better performance; they navigated faster and committed fewer errors. The activation of regions, like parahippocampal gyrus, related to spatial cognition, was observed in the searching phase and the activation of the cerebellum, superior temporal, and marginal gyrus, i.e. more probably related to music processing was observed during the finding step.

The active regions found in this work indicated the interplay of the neural substrate underlying to spatial-temporal tasks and music processing.