TY - JOUR T1 - Rediscovering the musician’s brain: a systematic review and meta-analysis JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/2021.03.12.434473 SP - 2021.03.12.434473 AU - Antonio Criscuolo AU - Victor Pando-Naude AU - Leonardo Bonetti AU - Peter Vuust AU - Elvira Brattico Y1 - 2021/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/03/12/2021.03.12.434473.abstract N2 - Musical expertise is a model of neuroplasticity associated with pervasive, long-lasting training effects. Indeed, decades of cognitive neuroscience widely investigated brain functional and structural changes associated with musical training, providing a widespread and variegated set of findings. However, several controversial results emerged, leading the neuroscientific community to lack a well-defined neuro-functional-anatomy of musical expertise. Here, we performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of publications investigating brain functional and structural differences between musicians and non-musicians. Eighty-four publications were included in the qualitative synthesis. Coordinate-based meta-analyses were conducted using the anatomic/activation likelihood estimation (ALE) method implemented in GingerALE, with a total of 675 foci, 79 experiments and 2780 participants. Results showed a widespread and complex array of functional and structural changes in musicians’ brains, revealing for the first time a comprehensive picture of the brain plasticity associated with musical training.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest. ER -