Musical training sharpens and bonds ears and tongue to hear speech better

Du, Yi; Zatorre, Robert J.

doi:10.1073/pnas.1712223114

Cited by 113 publications

(125 citation statements)

References 46 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

113

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…in rhythm information perception 36 , 37 , or spectral information perception 38 – 40 ) stems from the difference of operating regimes between musicians and non-musicians. In our tasks, the fact that musicians outperform non-musicians in the least predictable condition likely reflects that musicians are less susceptible to informational masking, when using both masking noise (Figs 1 and 2 ) and masking tones (Figs 3 and 6 ), also meaning that they are better in tone-in-noise perception 41 , 42 . This also reflects that musicians have enhanced auditory short-term memory 43 , 44 , and, as other perceptual experts, have better auditory sustained attention for complex tone patterns 25 , 45 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Organizational principles of multidimensional predictions in human auditory attention

Wollman¹,

Morillon²

2018

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Anticipating the future rests upon our ability to exploit contextual cues and to formulate valid internal models or predictions. It is currently unknown how multiple predictions combine to bias perceptual information processing, and in particular whether this is determined by physiological constraints, behavioral relevance (task demands), or past knowledge (perceptual expertise). In a series of behavioral auditory experiments involving musical experts and non-musicians, we investigated the respective and combined contribution of temporal and spectral predictions in multiple detection tasks. We show that temporal and spectral predictions alone systematically increase perceptual sensitivity, independently of task demands or expertise. When combined, however, spectral predictions benefit more to non-musicians and dominate over temporal ones, and the extent of the spectrotemporal synergistic interaction depends on task demands. This suggests that the hierarchy of dominance primarily reflects the tonotopic organization of the auditory system and that expertise or attention only have a secondary modulatory influence.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Organizational principles of multidimensional predictions in human auditory attention

Wollman¹,

Morillon²

2018

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Singing can also improve speech-related auditory-motor interactions and functional connectivity between auditory and speech motor regions. These both improve with more music training and may partially underlie enhanced perception of speech in noise (Du & Zatorre, 2017). Notably, in the aforementioned study more than half of the musicians participated also voice (singing) training.…”

Section: Perception Of Speech In Noise In the Two CI Groupsmentioning

confidence: 86%

Developmental Links Between Speech Perception in Noise, Singing, and Cortical Processing of Music in Children with Cochlear Implants

et al. 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The perception of speech in noise is challenging for children with cochlear implants (CIs). Singing and musical instrument playing have been associated with improved auditory skills in normal-hearing (NH) children. Therefore, we assessed how children with CIs who sing informally develop in the perception of speech in noise compared to those who do not. We also sought evidence of links of speech perception in noise with MMN and P3a brain responses to musical sounds and studied effects of age and changes over a 14–17 month time period in the speech-in-noise performance of children with CIs. Compared to the NH group, the entire CI group was less tolerant of noise in speech perception, but both groups improved similarly. The CI singing group showed better speech-in-noise perception than the CI non-singing group. The perception of speech in noise in children with CIs was associated with the amplitude of MMN to a change of sound from piano to cymbal, and in the CI singing group only, with earlier P3a for changes in timbre. While our results cannot address causality, they suggest that singing and musical instrument playing may have a potential to enhance the perception of speech in noise in children with CIs.

show abstract

“…A second goal of this study was to investigate transfer of musical training to the perception of speech in complex environments. There have been many reports of a musician advantage for speech perception in speech maskers (Baskent and Gaudrain, 2016;Clayton et al, 2016;Deroche et al, 2017;Du and Zatorre, 2017;Meha-Bettison et al, 2017;Morse-Fortier et al, 2017;Parbery-Clark et al, 2009;Slater and Kraus, 2016;Swaminathan et al, 2015;Yeend et al, 2017;Zendel and Alain, 2012; for a review see Coffey et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Speech-in-speech perception, nonverbal selective attention, and musical training.

Tierney¹,

Rosen

Dick³

2020

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Speech is more difficult to understand when it is presented concurrently with a distractor speech stream. One source of this difficulty is that competing speech can act as an attentional lure, requiring listeners to exert attentional control to ensure that attention does not drift away from the target. Stronger attentional control may enable listeners to more successfully ignore distracting speech, and so individual differences in selective attention may be one factor driving the ability to perceive speech in complex environments. However, the lack of a paradigm for measuring non-verbal sustained selective attention to sound has made this hypothesis difficult to test. Here we find that individuals who are better able to attend to a stream of tones and respond to occasional repeated sequences while ignoring a distractor tone stream are also better able to perceive speech masked by a single distractor talker. We also find that participants who have undergone more musical training show better performance on both verbal and non-verbal selective attention tasks, and this musician advantage is greater in older participants. This suggests that one source of a potential musician advantage for speech perception in complex environments may be experience or skill in directing and maintaining attention to a single auditory object.

show abstract

Musical training sharpens and bonds ears and tongue to hear speech better

Cited by 113 publications

References 46 publications

Organizational principles of multidimensional predictions in human auditory attention

Organizational principles of multidimensional predictions in human auditory attention

Developmental Links Between Speech Perception in Noise, Singing, and Cortical Processing of Music in Children with Cochlear Implants

Speech-in-speech perception, nonverbal selective attention, and musical training.

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About