Musical intervention enhances infants’ neural processing of temporal structure in music and speech

Abstract

Individuals with music training in early childhood show enhanced processing of musical sounds, an effect that generalizes to speech processing. However, the conclusions drawn from previous studies are limited due to the possible confounds of predisposition and other factors affecting musicians and nonmusicians. We used a randomized design to test the effects of a laboratory-controlled music intervention on young infants' neural processing of music and speech. Nine-month-old infants were randomly assigned to music (intervention) or play (control) activities for 12 sessions. The intervention targeted temporal structure learning using triple meter in music (e.g., waltz), which is difficult for infants, and it incorporated key characteristics of typical infant music classes to maximize learning (e.g., multimodal, social, and repetitive experiences). Controls had similar multimodal, social, repetitive play, but without music. Upon completion, infants' neural processing of temporal structure was tested in both music (tones in triple meter) and speech (foreign syllable structure). Infants' neural processing was quantified by the mismatch response (MMR) measured with a traditional oddball paradigm using magnetoencephalography (MEG). The intervention group exhibited significantly larger MMRs in response to music temporal structure violations in both auditory and prefrontal cortical regions. Identical results were obtained for temporal structure changes in speech. The intervention thus enhanced temporal structure processing not only in music, but also in speech, at 9 mo of age. We argue that the intervention enhanced infants' ability to extract temporal structure information and to predict future events in time, a skill affecting both music and speech processing.M usic training in early childhood has received increased attention as a model for the study of functional neural plasticity (1). Previous studies investigating musically trained adults and children have demonstrated their enhanced processing of musical pitch and meter in comparison with nontrained groups (2-6). Moreover, prior evidence also suggests generalization effects from early musical training to speech processing. For example, musically trained adults and children can better process pitch information in lexical tones and temporal information in syllable structure, compared with nonmusicians (7-10). These cross-domain effects from early music training to speech perception raise theoretically interesting and important questions about different levels of processing (e.g., lower level acoustic processing vs. higher level cognitive skills) affected by early experience (11).However, there are several methodological issues preventing strong causal inferences about the effects of early music training in studies comparing musicians with nonmusicians. First, predispositions (e.g., higher auditory acuity) may lead individuals to self-select early music training, thus contributing to the observed differences between musicians and nonmusicians. Second, there exists gre...

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