Neuroplastic effects of music lessons on hippocampal volume in children with congenital hypothyroidism

Children with congenital hypothyroidism (CH) whoexperience a neonatal thyroid hormone deficiency havereduced hippocampal volumes compared with healthycontrols. Interestingly, evidence suggests that musicaltraining can contribute to structural plasticity in a numberof brain areas, including the hippocampus. Therefore,we investigated whether taking music lessons couldameliorate the volumetric reductions of the hippocampusin children with CH. Left and right hippocampal volumeswere measured in four groups of children: children with CHwith and without music lessons, and healthy controls withand without music lessons. We found that the volume ofthe right hippocampus was comparable between childrenwith CH who had taken music lessons and the healthycontrols. Children with CH who had not taken music lessonshad reduced hippocampal volumes compared with the otherthree groups. These results suggest that music lessons mayinduce structural neuroplasticity in children with atypicalhippocampal development because of early thyroid hormonedeficiencies. NeuroReport 00:000–000