No abstract

The constant increase in the graying population is the result of a great expansion of life expectancy. A smaller expansion of healthy cognitive and brain functioning diminishes the gains achieved by longevity. Music training, as a special case of multisensory learning, may induce restorative neuroplasticity in older ages. The current study aimed to explore aging effects on the cortical network supporting multisensory cognition and to define aging effects on the network’s neuroplastic attributes. A computer-based music reading protocol was developed and evaluated via electroencephalography measurements pre- and post-training on young and older adults. Results revealed that multisensory integration is performed via diverse strategies in the two groups: Older adults employ higher-order supramodal areas to a greater extent than lower level perceptual regions, in contrast to younger adults, indicating an age-related shift in the weight of each processing strategy. Restorative neuroplasticity was revealed in the left inferior frontal gyrus and right medial temporal gyrus, as a result of the training, while task-related reorganization of cortical connectivity was obstructed in the group of older adults, probably due to systemic maturation mechanisms. On the contrary, younger adults significantly increased functional connectivity among the regions supporting multisensory integration.

No abstract

The present study was carried out to determine whether recorded musical tones played at various pitches on a clarinet, a flute, an oboe, and a trumpet are perceived as being equal in loudness when presented to listeners at the same A-weighted level. This psychophysical investigation showed systematic effects of both instrument type and pitch that could be related to spectral properties of the sounds under consideration. Level adjustments that were needed to equalize loudness well exceeded typical values of JNDs for signal level, thus confirming the insufficiency of A-weighting as a loudness predictor for musical sounds. Consequently, the use of elaborate computational prediction is stressed, in view of the necessity for thorough investigation of factors affecting the perception of loudness of musical sounds.

Purpose We aimed to develop and validate the Musicians' Hearing Handicap Index (MHHI), a new self-evaluation tool for quantifying occupation-related auditory difficulties in music professionals. Although pure-tone audiometry is often considered the “gold standard” and is usually employed as the main instrument for hearing assessment, it cannot fully describe the impact of hearing dysfunction. The MHHI is an attempt to complement the hearing impairment assessment toolbox and is based on a unique approach to quantify the effects of hearing-related symptoms or hearing loss on the performance of musicians and other music industry professionals. Method An initial set of 143 questionnaire items was successively refined through a series of critical appraisals, modifications, and suggestions. This yielded an intermediate questionnaire consisting of 43 items, which was administered to 204 musicians and sound engineers. After exploratory factor analysis, the final form of the MHHI questionnaire was obtained, consisting of 29 items. The questionnaire's test–retest reliability, internal consistency, discriminating power, content validity, criterion validity, and aspects of construct validity and inherent conceptual structure were assessed. Results Exploratory factor analysis revealed a combination of four common factors for the 29 validated questionnaire items. They were named “impact on social and working lives,” “difficulties in performance and sound perception,” “communication difficulties,” and “emotional distress.” The MHHI was shown to be a valid and reliable instrument to assess musicians' and sound engineers' occupational difficulties due to hearing impairment and related symptoms. Conclusion The ability of the MHHI to discriminate between groups of music professionals with different auditory symptoms or pure-tone audiometry thresholds suggests that auditory symptoms might influence a professional's performance to an extent that cannot be assessed by a pure-tone audiogram.

Two decades ago, the idea to focus on music-related aspects of behaviour as a methodological tool to study the neural correlates of human complex cognitive functions was a rather uncommon practice within neuroscience. Nowadays, a rapidly evolving field has been formed under the general name "The Neuroscience of Music" as an attempt to develop a whole new approach to the study of musical abilities, which would enrich the traditional music-theoretic ones. Besides that, and due to the fact that music-related behaviour encompasses many different functions of human cognition, it was recently proven to be a valuable window for neuroscientists onto complex brain functions. A draft map of the related research area could be formulated in terms of the simplicity or complexity of the behavioural aspect under study. That classification scheme might also be influenced by adopting a distinction between peripheral versus more centralized neural processing functions and their underlying neural structures.To begin with the more fundamental auditory perception qualities, which also constitute the main topic of interest within the current symposium, a brief introductory discussion to the talks that follow, will be done as an attempt to reveal the common ground between all different disciplines which focus on the analysis of neural processing of stimulus's characteristics along the auditory pathway up to the cortex. This kind of rather peripheral processing is performed through a series of successive transformations and encodings, by which characteristic spectrotemporal features of acquired individual sounds or musical tones are represented by corresponding sets of elementary perceptual attributes, such as pitch, timbre, subjective timing and duration.Recent studies on brain responses to various aspects of musical structure and syntax revealed the existence of characteristic topologies of brain activity, that correlate to specific macrotemporal aspects of music. Similarities between linguistic and musical structure processing, especially observations about the close interconnection of music and speech as an important factor for language acquisition in early life, are finally discussed through a presentation of a recently developed battery of musical tests (Overy, Ann NY Acad Sci, 2003) in combination with a computer based interface for an early diagnosis of specific learning difficulties in the domain of literacy (Overy and Papadelis, in press).

No abstract

No abstract