Inhibitory control is a core component of executive function and is defined as an individual’s ability to suppress impulses or distracting information unrelated to a goal or task by regulating attention, behavior, thoughts, or emotions, thereby enabling goal-directed action [1]. This capacity not only underpins higher-order cognitive processes such as attentional control, conflict processing, and decision-making, it is also closely linked to a range of psychopathologies [2, 3]. Consequently, enhancing inhibitory control has become a focal concern in both psychology and clinical medicine. In the current era of increasingly abundant online information, effectively improving inhibition control of redundant stimuli has become the focus of cognitive development. Previous research demonstrates enhanced inhibitory control via pharmacological interventions, cognitive training, and exercise programs [4, 5, 6, 7]. Pharmacological interventions (e.g., methylphenidate, which is commonly used to improve attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) primarily enhance inhibitory control by modulating neurotransmitter levels; however, they often have side effects and may increase long-term treatment costs [8, 9]. Cognitive training typically involves task-based repetitive practice, such as the Go/No-Go, Stroop, or working memory tasks, which strengthen executive functions. However, the monotonous nature of such training often leads to participant fatigue, thereby reducing intervention effectiveness [1, 10]. Exercise-based interventions have shown positive effects on inhibitory control; however, the magnitude of these effects varies considerably across populations and the evidence remains inconclusive [11, 12]. Although these approaches have demonstrated some effectiveness in improving inhibitory control, they have notable limitations. Therefore, interventions that are both engaging and effective must be identified. Music training offers distinct and comprehensive advantages through rich cognitive stimulation and effective artistic engagement [13].

Music training, as a typical multisensory-channel and multilevel cognitive processing activity, constitutes a multidimensional stimulus involving motor, somatosensory, auditory, visual, and spatial processing, as well as localization and the integration of these diverse forms of processing [14, 15], which has a particularly positive effect on inhibitory control ability [16]. According to the “Audiation” theory proposed by Edwin Gordon, the comprehension and processing of music depends on the brain’s ability to encode, maintain, and retrieve rhythmic and pitch patterns, a process that requires sustained cognitive engagement. To process these auditory patterns accurately, individuals must continuously suppress irrelevant and distracting stimuli, thereby maintaining selective attention to the target auditory information [17]. Therefore, repeatedly activating auditory processing and regulatory mechanisms during music training may effectively enhance long-term inhibitory control capacity. This advantage is closely related to the operational demands of instrumental performance. Musicians need to continuously monitor and rapidly adjust their playing actions based on auditory and proprioceptive feedback while simultaneously suppressing irrelevant distractions, indicating that this highly refined motor process in music training fundamentally requires substantial involvement in inhibitory control ability [10, 18].

Although music training relies heavily on auditory processing, most previous studies have focused on inhibitory control within the visual modality, paying limited attention to auditory channels. Even in relation to inhibitory control in music training [18], traditional research may neglect the inherent auditory-centered nature of music training. Some studies have found that professional musicians demonstrate significantly smaller interference effects in Stroop tasks than amateur musicians, reflecting their more efficient inhibitory control abilities [19]. The reduced interference observed in the professional group underscores the notion that music training, characterized by its highly refined integration of motor and cognitive demands, inherently necessitates the continuous engagement of inhibitory control mechanisms. However, assessing music training’s impact on inhibitory control via only visual stimuli may fail to represent music’s unique processing channels. In fact, the neural processing of inhibitory control exhibits significant modality-specific differences. Auditory conflict tasks are more closely aligned with the actual processing demands of musical training than visual tasks [20]. Previous research has demonstrated that musicians outperform non-musicians in auditory conflict tasks across behavioral measures, event-related potential (ERP) components, and time–frequency features, reflecting enhanced neural processing efficiency [21, 22], which may be closely linked to the auditory-based nature of music training. Compared with visual tasks, auditory tasks can better simulate the real cognitive demands imposed by music training. Therefore, a unimodal visual perspective is insufficient to completely elucidate the impact of music training on the inhibitory control (IC), and it is necessary to investigate its neural processing characteristics in a multimodal context.

Based on this, the present study employed the Stroop paradigm, utilizing both visual and auditory channels, combined with ERP and time-frequency analyses, to compare differences in inhibitory control tasks between university students with long-term systematic music training (music training group) and non-music majors (control group) to investigate the differences in the neural processing of inhibitory control across different perceptual modalities. Furthermore, a particular focus should be on whether the effects of musical training on inhibitory control are modality-specific or modality-general. The Stroop task is a classical method used to investigate the neural mechanisms of conflict processing. It consists of congruent (where semantic meaning and word color match) and incongruent (where semantic meaning and word color do not match) conditions [23]. Regarding ERPs, the Stroop task elicited prominent conflict-related N450/Ninc and late sustained potential (SP) components [24]. Specifically, N450 typically emerges approximately 300–500 ms after the presentation of visual stimuli, whereas Ninc is observed around 300–400 ms after auditory stimuli [25]. The SP component, appearing after N450/Ninc around 500–800 ms post-stimulus, is associated with the ability to resolve conflicts [26]. Regarding time-frequency, previous studies have shown that Stroop tasks can elicit significant theta- and beta-band activity. Theta power enhancement is widely considered an index of conflict monitoring and cognitive control and is closely associated with attentional regulation and error monitoring during tasks [27, 28]. Beta-band activity, on the other hand, is closely related to conflict resolution or processing [29, 30, 31]. This study examined both frequency bands to explore the modality specificity of inhibitory control by comparing the behavioral and brain electrical activities of different music training experiences through visual and auditory inhibitory control tasks.

To investigate the modality-specific versus modality-general effects of music training on inhibitory control, this study employed ERP and time-frequency analysis techniques to examine differences in inhibitory control between university-level music majors (music training group) and non-music majors (control group) during visual and auditory Stroop tasks. Previous studies have suggested that inhibitory control may exhibit both cross-modal and modality-specific characteristics, although the evidence remains inconsistent. Most research has focused on the visual modality, using N450 and SP to index conflict monitoring and resolution [24, 25]. In contrast, the function of inhibitory control in the auditory modality has been largely neglected, despite auditory processing being a core component of musical training. This study compared a music and non-music group on Stroop tasks in both visual and auditory modalities to examine whether the effects of musical training on inhibitory control are modality-specific.

At the behavioral level, no significant differences were observed between the music training and control groups in terms of accuracy, reaction time, or Stroop interference effects across both the visual and auditory modalities. In the ERP results, a significant group difference was found only in the visual modality; the Stroop-related SP difference wave (incongruent minus congruent) was significantly smaller in the music training group than in the control group. This pattern may indicate that the music group allocated fewer cognitive resources to the visual modality or employed more automated processing strategies to complete the task [35]. This does not preclude the possibility that the music group employed alternative information processing strategies in other brain regions or at different time windows, which warrants further investigation with additional electrode sites and temporal analyses in future studies. However, the time-frequency results revealed that in the auditory modality, the music training group exhibited significantly lower beta-band power under both congruent and incongruent conditions, suggesting more efficient neural resource allocation during auditory conflict resolution. Overall, the findings demonstrate that inhibitory control exhibits modality specificity across visual and auditory channels. Specifically, music training significantly enhanced individuals’ conflict-resolution abilities in the auditory modality, indicating a modality-specific facilitative effect of music training on inhibitory control.

The SP component and beta-band activity are widely recognized as neural indices reflecting conflict resolution processing [24, 36, 37, 38, 39]. Larger SP difference amplitudes typically indicate that individuals recruit more cognitive resources to resolve conflict [24]. Conversely, reductions in beta-band power generally reflect greater neural regulatory efficiency during conflict resolution. Therefore, although the music training group exhibited smaller SP amplitudes in the visual modality, possibly suggesting a lack of advantage in that channel, the significant decrease in beta power observed in the auditory modality reflects more efficient neural processing [36, 40]. Taken together, these results demonstrate that music training significantly enhances the neural regulatory capacity during conflict resolution in the auditory channel. However, no similar advantage was observed in the visual channel, indicating that the music training modality specifically facilitated inhibitory control. Previous studies have found that beta-band activity is associated with response inhibition and conflict resolution abilities, with lower beta power commonly linked to stronger conflict regulation capacity. For example, Bartoli et al. (2018) [41] demonstrated a strong correlation between beta-band neural oscillations and conflict processing, with notably heightened beta-wave amplitudes detected in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during tasks involving cognitive incongruity. Similarly, Li et al. (2025) [42] demonstrated that beta band activity is tightly linked to the process of conflict resolution, showing significant changes during the later stages of the Stroop task (920–1040 ms), with lower beta power observed in incongruent trials. Consistent with these findings, the present study revealed that participants in the music training group exhibited lower beta band power, which may reflect more efficient conflict resolution. This suggests that music training enhances conflict resolution ability, potentially in a modality-specific manner, with more pronounced effects on auditory processing.

Musicians’ advantages in conflict resolution may stem from continuous training in conflict monitoring and behavioral regulation abilities during long-term music practice [16, 43]. First, music training is a cognitively demanding, integrative activity in which individuals must continuously monitor multiple dimensions such as rhythm, pitch, and fingering during performance. They need to rapidly adjust their actions based on auditory feedback and bodily sensations, a process that requires ongoing error detection and conflict monitoring [44, 45]. Especially during instrumental performance, and more so in ensemble or improvisational contexts, performers must maintain high levels of attention and focus on complex tasks while actively suppressing interference from both internal sources (e.g., mind-wandering and irrelevant thoughts) and external distractions (e.g., environmental noise and phone notifications). Additionally, they must coordinate their timing and intonation with others [10], placing high demands on cognitive control systems. Therefore, long-term music training may enhance individuals’ selective processing of goal-relevant information during conflict tasks and improve their ability to inhibit irrelevant distractions [46]. Secondly, the inhibitory control advantages exhibited by the music training group may also arise from long-term training-induced plasticity in brain regions related to inhibitory control, such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, supplementary and pre-supplementary motor areas (SMA/pre-SMA), insula, and inferior frontal gyrus [47]. These regions are core neural substrates of executive function and conflict resolution [48, 49]. Previous studies indicated that musical training intensity correlates with inhibitory control-related brain activity. For example, James et al. (2014) [50] used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and found a significant positive correlation between musical training experience and gray matter density in the middle orbitofrontal gyrus of the right hemisphere and the left inferior frontal gyrus. Fauvel et al. (2014) [51] reported that a music training group showed significantly enhanced functional connectivity between the right inferior frontal gyrus and the anterior cingulate cortex compared to the control group. These brain regions are thought to play key roles in inhibitory control processes [52, 53, 54]. Additionally, Gaser and Schlaug (2003) [55] found that amateur musicians exhibit moderate increases in gray matter volume compared with non-musicians and professional musicians. Other evidence also indicates structural and functional differences in the prefrontal cortex between musicians and non-musicians [51].

Music training shows a more pronounced advantage in the auditory modality than in the visual modality, a phenomenon supported by research across multiple dimensions, including sensory channel processing advantages and neural plasticity. For example, Sharma et al. (2019) [56] found that musicians outperformed controls under incongruent stimulus conditions in an auditory Stroop task, indicating that music training significantly enhanced inhibitory control efficiency in the auditory system during conflict resolution. This suggests that the facilitative effect of music training on inhibitory control is not universally applicable across all sensory modalities but is more explicitly manifested in the auditory channel, closely related to its processing pathways. Furthermore, music training can continuously shape individuals’ multilevel auditory processing pathways from the auditory brainstem to the cortex. Studies have shown that early musical experience promotes the development of key regions, such as the left temporal auditory cortex, with musicians generally exhibiting greater cortical thickness and enhanced auditory perceptual abilities [57]. Additional research has demonstrated that musicians exhibit superior auditory perception in noisy environments, with their auditory brainstem responses showing more precise neural encoding of speech signals than non-musicians [58].

It is worth noting that this study employed a cross-sectional design comparing a music training group with a control group, which limits the ability to establish a causal relationship between music training and inhibitory control. Additionally, it cannot entirely rule out potential individual differences between the two groups, such as personality traits and baseline cognitive abilities [59]. Therefore, this study controlled for extraneous variables that may affect inhibitory control, including age and intelligence level, as rigorously as possible. This strict control of variables may partially explain why no significant group differences were found in visual modality. This result differs from those of previous studies that have reported differences in visual conflict processing. We speculate that such discrepancies may stem from the varying degrees of control over confounding variables in different research designs. Therefore, to interpret the nonsignificant group differences observed in the visual modality, we considered the effect sizes and their 95% confidence intervals. The intervals indicated that any differences were minimal and likely of little practical significance, suggesting that the findings more accurately reflected the limited impact of musical training on visual conflict processing than the complete absence of an effect. In contrast, time-frequency analysis in the auditory modality revealed a significant group difference in beta-band power, with the music training group exhibiting a distinct neural advantage. The observed modulation of beta activity, which may reflect enhanced efficiency in resolving auditory conflicts among musically trained individuals, suggests that the facilitative effects of music training on inhibitory control are primarily modality-specific and most prominent in the auditory domain. The identification of this modality-specific pattern offers novel evidence of the domain-constrained benefits of musical training and provides a promising direction for future research aimed at uncovering the underlying neural mechanisms.

Our study aimed to investigate the modality-specific versus modality-general effects of music training on inhibitory control by examining processing differences across perceptual modalities. To this end, we employed ERP and time–frequency analysis techniques to compare the neural processing characteristics and behavioral performance of two groups during both visual and auditory Stroop tasks. The results revealed that significant group differences emerged only in the beta-band power during the auditory modality: the music-trained participants demonstrated reduced beta activity compared to controls under both congruent and incongruent circumstances. These findings suggest that inhibitory control is modality-specific. Specifically, music training primarily enhanced conflict resolution abilities in the auditory modality, indicating a facilitative effect of music training on inhibitory control within auditory processing contexts.

The original contributions presented in this study are included in this article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding authors.

JN, JJC, JRM: the acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of data. YL: design of the work, funding acquisition, project administration, supervision. JN, JJC: writing–review & editing. All authors contributed to editorial changes in the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. All authors have participated sufficiently in the work and agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

These experiments were approved by the Ethics Committee of the School of Electronics and Information Engineering at Southwest University (Ethics Approval No. 18A08998) and complied with local regulations and institutional requirements. All participants provided written informed consent before their involvement in the study. The study was carried out in accordance with the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki.

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all the participants in the study.

The authors declare that financial support was received for the research and/or publication of this article. This study was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Young Scientists Fund (Grant No. 32200823), Chongqing Postgraduate Education and Teaching Reform Research Project (No. YJG233025), Chongqing Education Science “14th Five-Year Plan” Research Project (No. K23ZG2020062), Chongqing 2024 Municipal Higher Education (Undergraduate) Teaching Reform Research Project (No. 243045).

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at https://doi.org/10.31083/JIN45358.