![]() ![]() Rather, we aimed to test the possibility that preexisting auditory skills might at least partially mediate neural enhancements in speech processing. Our study was not intended to refute the possible connections between music training and enhanced linguistic brain function. To this end, the aim of the present study was to determine if preexisting differences in auditory skills might account for at least some of the neural enhancements in speech processing as frequently reported in trained musicians. In the nature-vs.-nurture debate of music and the brain, distinguishing between innate and experience-dependent effects is accomplished only through longitudinal training paradigms (which are costly and often impractical for assessing decades-long training effects) or utilizing objective measures of listening skills that can identify people with highly acute (i.e., musician-like) auditory abilities. Among the normal population, “musical sleepers” (i.e., nonmusicians with a high level of receptive musicality) are identified as individuals having naturally superior auditory and music listening skills but who lack formal musical training ( 30). While being “musical” no doubt encompasses more than simple hearing or perceptual abilities (e.g., instrumental production creativity), for this investigation we focus on the receptive aspects of musicality (i.e., auditory perceptual skills), following the long tradition of assessing formal music abilities through strictly perceptual measures ( 28– 32). Collectively, an overwhelming number of studies have implied that musical training shapes auditory brain function at multiple stages of subcortical and cortical processing and, in turn, bolsters the perceptual organization of speech.Ĭurrent conceptions of musicality define it as an innate, natural, and spontaneous development of widely shared traits, constrained by our cognitive abilities and biology, that underlie the capacity for music ( 27). Similarly, event-related potentials (ERPs) and fMRI show differential speech activity in musicians at cortical levels of the nervous system ( 13– 16). Interestingly, FFRs are augmented and shorter in latency in musicians than in nonmusicians, particularly for noise-degraded speech ( 10– 12), providing a neural account of their enhanced SIN perception observed behaviorally. The strength with which speech-evoked FFRs capture voice pitch (i.e., fundamental frequency F0) and harmonic timbre cues of complex signals is causally related to listeners’ perception of speech material ( 9). In particular, frequency-following responses (FFRs), predominantly reflecting phase-locked activity from the brainstem ( 6, 7) and, under some circumstances, from the cortex ( 7, 8), serve as a “neural fingerprint” of sound coding in the EEG ( 9). In the absence of formal training, individuals with intrinsically proficient auditory systems can exhibit musician-like auditory function that can be further shaped in an experience-dependent manner.Įlectrophysiological recordings have been useful in demonstrating music-related neuroplasticity at different levels of the auditory neuroaxis. Collectively, our findings suggest that the auditory neuroplasticity of music engagement likely involves a layering of both preexisting (nature) and experience-driven (nurture) factors in complex sound processing. Further comparisons between these musical sleepers and actual trained musicians suggested that experience provides an additional boost to the neural encoding and perception of speech. We found that listeners with naturally more adept listening skills (“musical sleepers”) had enhanced frequency-following responses to speech that were also more resilient to the detrimental effects of noise, consistent with the increased fidelity of speech encoding and speech-in-noise benefits observed previously in highly trained musicians. Here, we recorded neuroelectric brain activity to clear and noise-degraded speech sounds in individuals without formal music training but who differed in their receptive musical perceptual abilities as assessed objectively via the Profile of Music Perception Skills. These assumptions stem largely from cross-sectional studies between musicians and nonmusicians which cannot address whether training itself is sufficient to induce physiological changes or whether preexisting superiority in auditory function before training predisposes individuals to pursue musical interests and appear to have similar neuroplastic benefits as musicians. Musical training is associated with a myriad of neuroplastic changes in the brain, including more robust and efficient neural processing of clean and degraded speech signals at brainstem and cortical levels. ![]()
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