Neural correlates of professional classical singing

We evaluated cerebral activation maps of 43 subjects with respect to their classical singing skills. Professional opera singers, music conservatory vocal students, and medical students overtly sung parts of an Italian aria in a sparse sampling functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) experiment. Professional opera singers compared to medical students revealed increased activation in bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and inferior parietal lobe (IPL, both pronounced in the right hemisphere), right primary somatosensory cortex (S1) in the somatotopic representation of the articulators, but also in the cerebellum and the thalamus. Vocal students compared to medical students revealed bilateral increased activation in the IPL, the DLPFC, and S1. Opera singers compared to vocal students showed increased activation in the left caudate nucleus, the left cerebellum, bilateral DLPFC, and the medial dorsal and ventrolateral thalamus. A subsequent regression analysis was performed with the amount of weekly singing practice and showed practice dependent activation of DLPFC, bilateral IPL (pronounced in the right hemisphere), and S1. A further regression analysis excluding the opera singers showed left lateralized activation in the same regions. We conclude that experienced singers developed a specialized network for enhanced somatosensory processing and performance monitoring as well as motor sequence attention.