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      Inherent auditory skills rather than formal music training shape the neural encoding of speech

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      Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
      Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

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          Abstract

          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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

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          Most cited references37

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          Music training for the development of auditory skills.

          The effects of music training in relation to brain plasticity have caused excitement, evident from the popularity of books on this topic among scientists and the general public. Neuroscience research has shown that music training leads to changes throughout the auditory system that prime musicians for listening challenges beyond music processing. This effect of music training suggests that, akin to physical exercise and its impact on body fitness, music is a resource that tones the brain for auditory fitness. Therefore, the role of music in shaping individual development deserves consideration.
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            Development of a quick speech-in-noise test for measuring signal-to-noise ratio loss in normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners.

            This paper describes a shortened and improved version of the Speech in Noise (SIN) Test (Etymotic Research, 1993). In the first two of four experiments, the level of a female talker relative to that of four-talker babble was adjusted sentence by sentence to produce 50% correct scores for normal-hearing subjects. In the second two experiments, those sentences-in-babble that produced either lack of equivalence or high across-subject variability in scores were discarded. These experiments produced 12 equivalent lists, each containing six sentences, with one sentence at each adjusted signal-to-noise ratio of 25, 20, 15, 10, 5, and 0 dB. Six additional lists were also made equivalent when the scores of particular pairs were averaged. The final lists comprise the "QuickSIN" test that measures the SNR a listener requires to understand 50% of key words in sentences in a background of babble. The standard deviation of single-list scores is 1.4 dB SNR for hearing-impaired subjects, based on test-retest data. A single QuickSIN list takes approximately one minute to administer and provides an estimate of SNR loss accurate to +/-2.7 dB at the 95% confidence level.
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              Musical experience limits the degradative effects of background noise on the neural processing of sound.

              Musicians have lifelong experience parsing melodies from background harmonies, which can be considered a process analogous to speech perception in noise. To investigate the effect of musical experience on the neural representation of speech-in-noise, we compared subcortical neurophysiological responses to speech in quiet and noise in a group of highly trained musicians and nonmusician controls. Musicians were found to have a more robust subcortical representation of the acoustic stimulus in the presence of noise. Specifically, musicians demonstrated faster neural timing, enhanced representation of speech harmonics, and less degraded response morphology in noise. Neural measures were associated with better behavioral performance on the Hearing in Noise Test (HINT) for which musicians outperformed the nonmusician controls. These findings suggest that musical experience limits the negative effects of competing background noise, thereby providing the first biological evidence for musicians' perceptual advantage for speech-in-noise.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
                Proc Natl Acad Sci USA
                Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
                0027-8424
                1091-6490
                December 18 2018
                December 18 2018
                December 18 2018
                December 03 2018
                : 115
                : 51
                : 13129-13134
                Article
                10.1073/pnas.1811793115
                6304957
                30509989
                884c6fce-8c3c-4472-b3f9-1c6f2e5257bb
                © 2018

                Free to read

                http://www.pnas.org/site/misc/userlicense.xhtml

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