The Influence of Lifelong Musicianship on Neurophysiological Measures of Concurrent Sound Segregation

Abstract

The ability to separate concurrent sounds based on periodicity cues is critical for parsing complex auditory scenes. This ability is enhanced in young adult musicians and reduced in older adults. Here, we investigated the impact of lifelong musicianship on concurrent sound segregation and perception using scalp-recorded ERPs. Older and younger musicians and nonmusicians were presented with periodic harmonic complexes where the second harmonic could be tuned or mistuned by 1-16% of its original value. The likelihood of perceiving two simultaneous sounds increased with mistuning, and musicians, both older and younger, were more likely to detect and report hearing two sounds when the second harmonic was mistuned at or above 2%. The perception of a mistuned harmonic as a separate sound was paralleled by an object-related negativity that was larger and earlier in younger musicians compared with the other three groups. When listeners made a judgment about the harmonic stimuli, the perception of the mistuned harmonic as a separate sound was paralleled by a positive wave at about 400 msec poststimulus (P400), which was enhanced in both older and younger musicians. These findings suggest attention-dependent processing of a mistuned harmonic is enhanced in older musicians and provides further evidence that age-related decline in hearing abilities are mitigated by musical training.

Low-frequency signals produced by Northeast Atlantic killer whales (Orcinus orca)

“…Overall, perhaps the strong speech-on-speech perception advantage observed with musicians is not a direct result of better pitch perception, but instead more associated with other factors related to auditory perception, such as better stream segregation, better rhythm perception, or even better auditory cognitive abilities (Zendel and Alain, 2013;Miendlarzewska and Trost, 2014;Carey et al, 2015).…”

“…This musician advantage may be due to better processing of acoustic features, such as pitch or fundamental frequency (F0), which is a primary dimension in music (Micheyl et al, 2006) or better stream segregation (Zendel and Alain, 2013). Alternatively, or perhaps in addition, the advantage could also be due to enhanced auditory cognitive abilities, such as better attention or extended working memory capacity, at least in the auditory modality (Strait et al, 2010;Carey et al, 2015).…”

The Impact of Musicianship on the Cortical Mechanisms Related to Separating Speech from Background Noise

“…For the N1-P2 response, these enhancements were especially evident for spectrally rich sounds (Shahin, Roberts, Pantev, Trainor, & Ross, 2005) or sounds that match the musicians instrument of training (Pantev, Roberts, Schulz, Engelien, & Ross, 2001). An enhancement in musicians for P1 was observed for speech sounds (Musacchia et al, 2008); however, a reduction in P1 has been observed in musicians for single tones, chords, and harmonic complexes (Zendel & Alain, 2013;Kuriki et al, 2006). Accordingly, it is likely that P1 is sensitive to musical training.…”

“…Using this type of stimulus, Alain (2009, 2013) demonstrated that musicians can detect smaller levels of mistuning compared with nonmusicians. This enhanced ability to perceptually segregate a mistuned harmonic was paralleled by enhancements to a task-independent ERP known as the object-related negativity and a task-dependent component known as the P400 (Zendel & Alain, 2009, 2013. Once sounds are segregated, they must be tracked over time, and musicians are able to maintain segregated auditory streams in memory longer than nonmusicians (Beauvois & Meddis, 1997).…”

Age-related differences in the sequential organization of speech sounds

“…An example of age-related difficulty parsing simultaneous sounds is demonstrated by older adults' higher thresholds for detecting a mistuned harmonic (Alain et al, 2001;Grube et al, 2003;Zendel and Alain, 2012). Low thresholds for mistuned harmonics are understood to indicate effective sound segregation.…”