Musical training sharpens and bonds ears and tongue to hear speech better

The idea that musical training improves speech perception in challenging listening environments is appealing and of clinical importance, yet the mechanisms of any such musician advantage are not well specified. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we found that musicians outperf...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 114; no. 51; p. 13579
Main Authors: Du, Yi, Zatorre, Robert J
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: United States 19.12.2017
Subjects:
Adult
Brain - diagnostic imaging
Brain - physiology
Case-Control Studies
Connectome
Female
Humans
Male
Music
Noise
Speech Perception
functional connectivity
musical training
multivoxel pattern classification
speech in noise perception
auditory–motor integration
ISSN:1091-6490, 1091-6490
Online Access:Get more information
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Summary:The idea that musical training improves speech perception in challenging listening environments is appealing and of clinical importance, yet the mechanisms of any such musician advantage are not well specified. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we found that musicians outperformed nonmusicians in identifying syllables at varying signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), which was associated with stronger activation of the left inferior frontal and right auditory regions in musicians compared with nonmusicians. Moreover, musicians showed greater specificity of phoneme representations in bilateral auditory and speech motor regions (e.g., premotor cortex) at higher SNRs and in the left speech motor regions at lower SNRs, as determined by multivoxel pattern analysis. Musical training also enhanced the intrahemispheric and interhemispheric functional connectivity between auditory and speech motor regions. Our findings suggest that improved speech in noise perception in musicians relies on stronger recruitment of, finer phonological representations in, and stronger functional connectivity between auditory and frontal speech motor cortices in both hemispheres, regions involved in bottom-up spectrotemporal analyses and top-down articulatory prediction and sensorimotor integration, respectively.
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ISSN:1091-6490
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1712223114