Background:
Musical and surgical performances both rely on fine movements and visuospatial intelligence (VSI). Musicians tend to outperform non-musicians in spatial tasks and surgical skills, but an unexplored group is non-musicians with high music perception - musical sleepers (S). This study investigates spatial and surgical skills in this group.

Objectives:
To assess whether high music perception in non-musicians improves spatial and surgical task performance.

Methods:
In this cross-sectional study, 150 female right-handed first-year medical students were included and classified into three groups - Musicians (M), musical sleepers (S), and non-musicians (N). The latter two groups were divided based on participants’ scores in a music perception (MP) test called the MiniPROMS. Participants scoring higher than the sample median were classified into the S group. We compared mental rotation (MR) task performance in these three groups. We then taught a one-handed surgical knot to the participants (n=56) and compared their MP with knotting performance, assessed objectively using a validated checklist. We also explored how MRT scores correlate with MiniPROMS scores to assess the relationship between MP and MR. Lastly, we explored how surgical task performance correlates with MP (N=56) while controlling for MR.

Results:
Kruskal-Wallis and Bonferroni’s tests showed that M (mean rank=41.90, p<0.001) and S (mean rank=21.78, p=0.013) outperformed N in MRT, with no significant difference between M and S. There was no difference in surgical task performance between S and N. MP and MR showed a weak correlation, and after controlling for MR, MP modestly correlated with surgical performance (r=0.268, p=0.048).

Conclusion:
Non-musicians with high music perception demonstrate better spatial task performance than those with low music perception, although no clear benefit was seen in surgical tasks. Future research is needed to determine if these advantages extend to surgical performance.

Keywords: Interdisciplinary, Medical Education, Music Cognition, Neuroscience, Surgical Skill Acquisition Music Perception, Musical Sleepers.