Musical experience shapes human brainstem encoding of linguistic pitch patterns.
Music and speech are very cognitively demanding auditory phenomena generally attributed to cortical rather than subcortical circuitry. We examined brainstem encoding of linguistic pitch and found that musicians show more robust and faithful encoding compared with nonmusicians. These results not only implicate a common subcortical manifestation for two presumed cortical functions, but also a possible reciprocity of corticofugal speech and music tuning, providing neurophysiological explanations for musicians' higher language-learning ability.
Wong
Patrick C M
PC
The Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, 2240 Campus Drive, Evanston, Illinois 60208-3540, USA. pwong@northwestern.edu
Skoe
Erika
E
Russo
Nicole M
NM
Dees
Tasha
T
Kraus
Nina
N
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D001931:Brain Mapping; D001933:Brain Stem / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D009146:Music; D009790:Occupations; D010897:Pitch Discrimination / Q000502:physiology; D010898:Pitch Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D013997:Time Factors