Musicians and tone-language speakers share enhanced brainstem encoding but not perceptual benefits for musical pitch

Abstract

Behavioral and neurophysiological transfer effects from music experience to language processing are well-established but it is currently unclear whether or not linguistic expertise (e.g., speaking a tone language) benefits music-related processing and its perception. Here, we compare brainstem responses of English-speaking musicians/non-musicians and native speakers of Mandarin Chinese elicited by tuned and detuned musical chords, to determine if enhancements in subcortical processing translate to improvements in the perceptual discrimination of musical pitch. Relative to non-musicians, both musicians and Chinese had stronger brainstem representation of the defining pitches of musical sequences. In contrast, two behavioral pitch discrimination tasks revealed that neither Chinese nor non-musicians were able to discriminate subtle changes in musical pitch with the same accuracy as musicians. Pooled across all listeners, brainstem magnitudes predicted behavioral pitch discrimination performance but considering each group individually, only musicians showed connections between neural and behavioral measures. No brain-behavior correlations were found for tone language speakers or non-musicians. These findings point to a dissociation between subcortical neurophysiological processing and behavioral measures of pitch perception in Chinese listeners. We infer that sensory-level enhancement of musical pitch information yields cognitive-level perceptual benefits only when that information is behaviorally relevant to the listener.

Auditory imagery and the poor-pitch singer

“…However, that study found no advantage for tone language speakers in the imitation of monotone sequences like those used here. Likewise, analyses of imitation accuracy across tone and nontone language speakers here yielded no differences, nor did comparisons of groups for BAIS subscales and the perceptual discrimination task (note that evidence for a tone language advantage for simple pitch discrimination is mixed; Bidelman, Gandour, & Krishnan, 2011).…”

Psychophysical auditory filter estimates reveal sharper cochlear tuning in musicians

“…22 Musicians excel at both of these skills. 2,12,13 By this account then, musicians' stronger MOC activity may provide more antimasking at the probe signal frequency, enhancing its contrast from the noise masker, and consequently providing sharper estimates of filtering in that cochlear channel. Alternatively, stronger top-down efferent control in musicians 24 may allow them to preemptively inhibit MOC gain reduction (which can alter neural tuning curves 22 ) and thus maintain a higher degree of frequency resolution compared to nonmusicians.…”

“…13 The masker was a 300 ms pure tone gated with 5 ms cos 2 ramps. Tonal maskers had normalized frequencies of 0.12, 0.25, 0.50, 0.62, 0.75, 0.87, 1.00, 1.05, 1.12, 1.25, and 1.50 relative to the probe's CF.…”

“…5,10,11 Greater spectral sensitivity in musically trained ears suggests that musicianship may increase auditory filter selectivity. Increased cochlear tuning (i.e., auditory filter resolution) in musicians would help explain their enhanced pitch 1,[12][13][14] and timbre 2,3 discrimination abilities and spectral acuity observed in countless behavioral studies. The possibility of musicians having sharper auditory filters has been suggested 15 but not validated empirically (cf.…”

Effect of musical training on static and dynamic measures of spectral-pattern discrimination

“…The relationship of this benefit to psychoacoustic measures of auditory abilities at present is unclear. Frequency and pitch discrimination has received the greatest attention in psychoacoustic studies of the effect of musical training (e.g., Spiegel and Watson, 1984;Micheyl et al, 2006;Parbery-Clark et al, 2009;Bidelman et al, 2011;Deguchi et al, 2012). Compared to nonmusicians, results have shown superior performance by musicians with the effect of psychoacoustic training of nonmusicians also evident when measured.…”