Research finds music training 'tunes' human auditory systemMarch 13, 2007EVANSTON, Ill. — A newly published study by Northwestern University researchers suggests that Mom was right when she insisted that you continue music lessons — even after it was clear that a professional music career was not in your future. The study, which will appear in the April issue of Nature Neuroscience, is the first to provide concrete evidence that playing a musical instrument significantly enhances the brainstem's sensitivity to speech sounds. This finding has broad implications because it applies to sound encoding skills involved not only in music but also in language. The findings indicate that experience with music at a young age in effect can "fine-tune" the brain's auditory system. "Increasing music experience appears to benefit all children — whether musically exceptional or not — in a wide range of learning activities," says Nina Kraus, director of Northwestern's Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory and senior author of the study.
"Our findings underscore the pervasive impact of musical training on neurological development. Yet music classes are often among the first to be cut when school budgets get tight. That's a mistake," says Kraus, Hugh Knowles Professor of Neurobiology and Physiology and professor of communication sciences and disorders. "Our study is the first to ask whether enhancing the sound environment — in this case with musical training — will positively affect the way an individual encodes sound even at a level as basic as the brainstem," says Patrick Wong, primary author of "Musical Experience Shapes Human Brainstem Encoding of Linguistic Pitch Patterns." An old structure from an evolutionary standpoint, the brainstem once was thought to only play a passive role in auditory processing. Using a novel experimental design, the researchers presented the Mandarin word "mi" to 20 adults as they watched a movie. Half had at least six years of musical instrument training starting before the age of 12. The other half had minimal (less than 2 years) or no musical training. All were native English speakers with no knowledge of Mandarin, a tone language. In tone languages, a single word can differ in meaning depending on pitch patterns called "tones." For example, the Mandarin word "mi" delivered in a level tone means "to squint," in a rising tone means "to bewilder," and in a dipping (falling then rising) tone means "rice." English, on the other hand, only uses pitch to reflect intonation (as when rising pitch is used in questions). As the subjects watched the movie, the researchers used electrophysiological methods to measure and graph the accuracy of their brainstem ability to track the three differently pitched "mi" sounds. "Even with their attention focused on the movie and though the sounds had no linguistic or musical meaning for them, we found our musically trained subjects were far better at tracking the three different tones than the non-musicians," says Wong, director of Northwestern's Speech Research Laboratory and assistant professor of communication sciences and disorders. The research by co-authors Wong, Kraus, Erika Skoe, Nicole Russo and Tasha Dees represents a new way of defining the relationship between the brainstem — a lower order brain structure thought to be unchangeable and uninvolved in complex processing — and the neocortex, a higher order brain structure associated with music, language and other complex processing. These findings are in line with previous studies by Wong and his group suggesting that musical experience can improve one's ability to learn tone languages in adulthood and level of musical experience plays a role in the degree of activation in the auditory cortex. Wong also is a faculty member in Northwestern's Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program. The findings also are consistent with studies by Kraus and her research team that have revealed anomalies in brainstem sound encoding in some children with learning disabilities which can be improved by auditory training. "We've found that by playing music — an action thought of as a function of the neocortex — a person may actually be tuning the brainstem," says Kraus. "This suggests that the relationship between the brainstem and neocortex is a dynamic and reciprocal one and tells us that our basic sensory circuitry is more malleable than we previously thought." Overall, the findings assist in unfolding new lines of inquiry. The researchers now are looking to find ways to "train" the brain to better encode sound - work that potentially has far-reaching educational and clinical implications. The study was supported by Northwestern University, grants from the National Institutes of Health and a grant from the National Science Foundation. Northwestern University Science News and Science Current Events Tag Cloud This tag cloud is a visual representation of term frequencies of random science news topics with common terms grouped together and emphasized by their display size. Anesthesia Venus Eating Disorder Whales Cancer Survival World Trade Center Immunization Body Weight Sexual Abuse Premature Birth Multiple Myeloma Contraception Malaria Vaccine Tooth Loss Comet Abdominal Pain Coral Reefs Medical Imaging Space Exploration Circumcision Rett Syndrome Endothelial Cells Bioenergy Lung Function Type 1 Diabetes
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Related Auditory System Current Events and Auditory System News Articles Iron deficiency in womb may delay brain maturation in preemies Iron plays a large role in brain development in the womb, and new University of Rochester Medical Center research shows an iron deficiency may delay the development of auditory nervous system in preemies. Neuroscientists discover long-term potentiation in the olfactory bulb Ben W. Strowbridge, Ph.D, associate professor of Neuroscience and Physiology/Biophysics, and Yuan Gao, a Ph.D. student in the neurosciences program at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, are the first to discover a form of synaptic memory in the olfactory bulb, the part of the brain that processes the sense of smell. Researchers Studying Hearing Loss in Adult Animals Find that Auditory Regions of the Brain Convert to the Sense of Touch Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine researchers have discovered that adult animals with hearing loss actually re-route the sense of touch into the hearing parts of the brain. MRI machines may damage cochlear implants Patients with cochlear implants may want to steer clear of certain magnetic imaging devices, such as 3T MRI machines, because the machines can demagnetize the patient's implant, according to new research published in the December 2008 issue of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery. Is that song sexy or just so-so? Why is your mate's rendition of Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get it On" cute and sexy sometimes and so annoying at other times? A songbird study conducted by Emory University sheds new light on this question, showing that a change in hormone levels may alter the way we perceive social cues by altering a system of brain nuclei, common to all vertebrates, called the "social behavior network." Cochlear implant recipients experience improvement in quality of life Cochlear implant recipients experience a significant improvement in their quality of life, and have improved speech recognition, according to new research published in the March 2008 issue of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery. Neurons use chemical 'chords' to shape signaling Researchers have discovered that neurons can use two different neurotransmitters that target the same receptor on a receiving neuron to shape the transmission of a nerve impulse. Ability to listen to 2 things at once is largely inherited, says twin study Your ability to listen to a phone message in one ear while a friend is talking into your other ear-and comprehend what both are saying-is an important communication skill that's heavily influenced by your genes. Do you hear what i see? New research pinpoints specific areas in sound processing centers in the brains of macaque monkeys that shows enhanced activity when the animals watch a video. Researchers discover mechanism that determines when detailed memories are retained The levels of a chemical released by the brain determine how detailed a memory will later be, according to researchers at UC Irvine. More Auditory System Current Events and Auditory System News Articles |
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