Musical Experience Shapes Neural Processing

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-86
Author(s):  
Wido Nager ◽  
Tilla Franke ◽  
Tobias Wagner-Altendorf ◽  
Eckart Altenmüller ◽  
Thomas F. Münte
Keyword(s):  
Mismatch Negativity ◽  
Pure Tone ◽  
Musical Instrument ◽  
Active Listening ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
Neural Processing ◽  
Neural Adaptations

Abstract. Playing a musical instrument professionally has been shown to lead to structural and functional neural adaptations, making musicians valuable subjects for neuroplasticity research. Here, we follow the hypothesis that specific musical demands further shape neural processing. To test this assumption, we subjected groups of professional drummers, professional woodwind players, and nonmusicians to pure tone sequences and drum sequences in which infrequent anticipations of tones or drum beats had been inserted. Passively listening to these sequences elicited a mismatch negativity to the temporally deviant stimuli which was greater in the musicians for tone series and particularly large for drummers for drum sequences. In active listening conditions drummers more accurately and more quickly detected temporally deviant stimuli.

Mismatch Negativity and Stimulus-Specific Adaptation in Animal Models

2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 214-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Israel Nelken ◽  
Nachum Ulanovsky
Keyword(s):  
Animal Models ◽  
Auditory Cortex ◽  
Change Detection ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Mismatch Negativity ◽  
Single Neuron ◽  
Neural Processing ◽  
Sensory Coding ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Specific Adaptation

Animal models of MMN may serve both to further our understanding of neural processing beyond pure sensory coding and for unraveling the neural and pharmacological processes involved in the generation of MMN. We start this review by discussing the methodological issues that are especially important when pursuing a single-neuron correlate of MMN. Correlates of MMN have been studied in mice, rats, cats, and primates. Whereas essentially all of these studies demonstrated the presence of stimulus-specific adaptation, in the sense that responses to deviant tones are larger than the responses to standard tones, the presence of real MMN has been established only in a few. We argue for the use of more and better controls in order to clarify the situation. Finally, we discuss in detail the relationships between stimulus-specific adaptation of single-neuron responses, as established in the cat auditory cortex, and MMN. We argue that this is currently the only fully established correlate of true change detection, and hypothesize that it precedes and probably induces the neural activity that is eventually measured as MMN.

The Effect of Aging and the High-Frequency Auditory Threshold on Speech-Evoked Mismatch Negativity in a Noisy Background

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junming Chen ◽  
Suijun Chen ◽  
Yiqing Zheng ◽  
Yongkang Ou
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Processing ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Mismatch Negativity ◽  
Pure Tone ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Elderly Subjects ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Central Auditory Processing ◽  
Hearing Thresholds ◽  
Noisy Background

Mismatch negativity (MMN) has been widely used to study the function of central auditory processing in the elderly. However, current research has not yet considered the effect of noise and high-frequency hearing threshold on MMN in the elderly. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of aging and high-frequency hearing loss on speech-related MMN in noisy backgrounds. Additionally, the possible mechanisms of central auditory processing dysfunction in the elderly were investigated. Fifty people aged 61-80 (70 ± 5.8) years were recruited for this study. They were divided into a 61- to 70-year-old group and a 71- to 80-year-old group. Fifty younger adults aged 21-40 (31 ± 5.3) years were recruited as healthy controls. Pure-tone hearing thresholds were recorded. A speech discrimination score (SDS) and a speech-evoked MMN under white noise with a bandwidth from 125 to 8,000 Hz background condition were recorded. The relationships between SDS and MMN latency and amplitude were analyzed. The effects of age and binaural 2,000-, 4,000- and 8,000-Hz pure-tone hearing thresholds on MMN latency and amplitude were analyzed. We found that the hearing thresholds of 2,000, 4,000 and 8,000 Hz in the 61- to 70-year-old and 71- to 80-year-old groups were higher than those in the control group. The SDS in a noisy background in the 61- to 70-year-old and 71- to 80-year-old groups were lower than those in the control group. Speech-evoked MMN latency was longer in the 61- to 70-year-old and in the 71- to 80-year-old groups than in the control group (215.8 ± 14.2 ms). SDS and speech-evoked MMN latency were negatively correlated. Age and speech-evoked MMN latency were positively correlated, as were the binaural 4,000- to 8,000-Hz pure-tone hearing thresholds and speech-evoked MMN. This study suggests that in elderly subjects, the function of preattentive central auditory processing changes. Additionally, increasing age and high-frequency hearing thresholds create a synergy in neurons that is weakened in the MMN time window, which may be a cause of central auditory processing disorders in elderly subjects in noisy background conditions.

scholarly journals Neural detection of changes in amplitude rise time in infancy.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Áine Ní Choisdealbha ◽  
Adam Attaheri ◽  
Sinead Rocha ◽  
Perrine Brusini ◽  
Sheila Flanagan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Speech Processing ◽  
Rise Time ◽  
Mismatch Negativity ◽  
Neural Processing ◽  
Amplitude Envelope ◽  
Acoustic Cues ◽  
Perceptual Sensitivity ◽  
Language Difficulties ◽  
Neural Entrainment ◽  
First Time

Amplitude rise times play a crucial role in the perception of rhythm in speech, and reduced perceptual sensitivity to differences in rise time is related to developmental language difficulties. Amplitude rise times also play a mechanistic role in neural entrainment to the speech amplitude envelope. Using an ERP paradigm, here we examined for the first time whether infants at the ages of seven and eleven months exhibit an auditory mismatch response to changes in the rise times of simple repeating auditory stimuli. We found that infants exhibited a mismatch response to the oddball rise time that was more positive at seven than eleven months of age. At eleven months, there was a left-lateralised shift to a mismatch negativity. Infants’ ability to detect changes in rise time was generally robust, with a range of oddball stimuli with different rise times each eliciting a mismatch response from 85% of infants. A lateralised effect indicated that the size of the mismatch response varied as the change in rise time became easier to detect. The mismatch response to the different rise time oddballs also stabilised as infants got older. The results indicate that neural processing of changes in rise time develops early in life, supporting the possibility that early speech processing is facilitated by neural sensitivity to these acoustic cues to rhythm.

scholarly journals Neural Advantages of Older Musicians Involve the Cerebellum: Implications for Healthy Aging Through Lifelong Musical Instrument Training

2022 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masatoshi Yamashita ◽  
Chie Ohsawa ◽  
Maki Suzuki ◽  
Xia Guo ◽  
Makiko Sadakata ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
Healthy Aging ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Gray Matter Volume ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Musical Instrument ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
Instrumental Training ◽  
Age Related

This study compared 30 older musicians and 30 age-matched non-musicians to investigate the association between lifelong musical instrument training and age-related cognitive decline and brain atrophy (musicians: mean age 70.8 years, musical experience 52.7 years; non-musicians: mean age 71.4 years, no or less than 3 years of musical experience). Although previous research has demonstrated that young musicians have larger gray matter volume (GMV) in the auditory-motor cortices and cerebellum than non-musicians, little is known about older musicians. Music imagery in young musicians is also known to share a neural underpinning [the supramarginal gyrus (SMG) and cerebellum] with music performance. Thus, we hypothesized that older musicians would show superiority to non-musicians in some of the abovementioned brain regions. Behavioral performance, GMV, and brain activity, including functional connectivity (FC) during melodic working memory (MWM) tasks, were evaluated in both groups. Behaviorally, musicians exhibited a much higher tapping speed than non-musicians, and tapping speed was correlated with executive function in musicians. Structural analyses revealed larger GMVs in both sides of the cerebellum of musicians, and importantly, this was maintained until very old age. Task-related FC analyses revealed that musicians possessed greater cerebellar-hippocampal FC, which was correlated with tapping speed. Furthermore, musicians showed higher activation in the SMG during MWM tasks; this was correlated with earlier commencement of instrumental training. These results indicate advantages or heightened coupling in brain regions associated with music performance and imagery in musicians. We suggest that lifelong instrumental training highly predicts the structural maintenance of the cerebellum and related cognitive maintenance in old age.

Musical experience predicts cognitive differences in a large, demographically matched sample

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily S Nichols ◽  
Allison M Frantz ◽  
Conor J Wild ◽  
Adrian M Owen
Keyword(s):  
Musical Instrument ◽  
Demographic Variables ◽  
Cognitive Tasks ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
Cognitive Tests ◽  
Cognitive Differences ◽  
Cognitive Domains ◽  
Cognitive Benefits

Research is mixed on whether playing a musical instrument leads to generalised cognitive benefits, and in which domains these improvements occur. Here, we leveraged a large (>6,000) sample of demographically-matched participants who either reported playing an instrument, or reported playing no instruments. Participants completed a well-established online battery of cognitive tasks to determine whether differences existed, and if so, in which cognitive domains. Linear regression, controlling for demographic variables, was used to examine differences between instrumentalists and non-instrumentalists. Follow-up analyses examined whether the number of instruments played predicted scores, and whether certain types of instrumentalists outperformed others. Robust group differences were found on eight cognitive tests, and in all cases instrumentalists outperformed non- instrumentalists. However, all of these effects were so small that they are unlikely to translate to any meaningful differences between individuals with or without musical experience. Cognitive scores correlated with number of instruments on nine tests, but no systematic differences existed between types of instrumentalists. While a causal relationship cannot be unequivocally confirmed, we propose that there may be some, albeit modest, transfer from musical experience to certain cognitive domains, and that these benefits scale with number of instruments played.

Accessibility and participation in the use of an inclusive musical instrument: The case of MotionComposer

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alicia Peñalba ◽  
María-José Valles ◽  
Elena Partesotti ◽  
María-Ángeles Sevillano ◽  
Rosario Castañón
Keyword(s):  
Motion Capture ◽  
Musical Instrument ◽  
Musical Instruments ◽  
The Other ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
Digital Instrument ◽  
Musical Practice ◽  
Different Ages

Digital musical instruments (DMI) can make musical practice accessible to non-trained persons or to persons with limitations related to their age, gender or musical experience. The present study explores accessibility and participation in a sample of 266 individuals using a device named MotionComposer, a digital instrument based on motion capture. By experimenting with this device during four minutes in two different environments (one causal, the other one more aprioristically determined), we study the kind of participant interaction that takes place. Results show that MotionComposer allows for a statistically significant similar interaction in people of different ages and genders and with different disabilities. However, there are two exceptions that can be accounted for in connection with the causality-randomness of the two environments where the experimentation takes place.

Abnormal mismatch negativity for pure-tone sounds in temporal lobe epilepsy

2011 ◽  
Vol 94 (3) ◽  
pp. 149-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miho Miyajima ◽  
Katsuya Ohta ◽  
Keiko Hara ◽  
Hiroko Iino ◽  
Taketoshi Maehara ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Lobe Epilepsy ◽  
Temporal Lobe ◽  
Mismatch Negativity ◽  
Pure Tone

scholarly journals The Edinburgh Lifetime Musical Experience Questionnaire (ELMEQ): Responses and non-musical correlates in the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (7) ◽  
pp. e0254176
Author(s):  
Judith A. Okely ◽  
Ian J. Deary ◽  
Katie Overy
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Birth Cohort ◽  
Musical Training ◽  
Musical Instrument ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
Music Listening ◽  
Musical Ability ◽  
Lifetime Experience ◽  
Lothian Birth Cohort ◽  
Experience Questionnaire

There is growing evidence of the potential effects of musical training on the human brain, as well as increasing interest in the potential contribution of musical experience to healthy ageing. Conducting research on these topics with older adults requires a comprehensive assessment of musical experience across the lifespan, as well as an understanding of which variables might correlate with musical training and experience (such as personality traits or years of education). The present study introduces a short questionnaire for assessing lifetime musical training and experience in older populations: the Edinburgh Lifetime Musical Experience Questionnaire (ELMEQ). 420 participants from the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 completed the ELMEQ at a mean age of 82 years. We used their responses to the ELMEQ to address three objectives: 1) to report the prevalence of lifetime musical experience in a sample of older adults; 2) to demonstrate how certain item-level responses can be used to model latent variables quantifying experience in different musical domains (playing a musical instrument, singing, self-reported musical ability, and music listening); and 3) to examine non-musical (lifespan) correlates of these domains. In this cohort, 420 of 431 participants (97%) completed the questionnaire. 40% of participants reported some lifetime experience of playing a musical instrument, starting at a median age of 10 years and playing for a median of 5 years. 38% of participants reported some lifetime experience of singing in a group. Non-musical variables of childhood environment, years of education, childhood cognitive ability, female sex, extraversion, history of arthritis and fewer constraints on activities of daily living were found to be associated, variously, with the domains of playing a musical instrument, singing, self-reported musical ability, and music listening. The ELMEQ was found to be an effective research tool with older adults and is made freely available for future research.

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