title: Enhanced attention-dependent activity in the auditory cortex of older musicians.
abstract: Musical training improves auditory processing abilities, which correlates with neuro-plastic changes in exogenous (input-driven) and endogenous (attention-dependent) components of auditory event-related potentials (ERPs). Evidence suggests that musicians, compared to non-musicians, experience less age-related decline in auditory processing abilities. Here, we investigated whether lifelong musicianship mitigates exogenous or endogenous processing by measuring auditory ERPs in younger and older musicians and non-musicians while they either attended to auditory stimuli or watched a muted subtitled movie of their choice. Both age and musical training-related differences were observed in the exogenous components; however, the differences between musicians and non-musicians were similar across the lifespan. These results suggest that exogenous auditory ERPs are enhanced in musicians, but decline with age at the same rate. On the other hand, attention-related activity, modeled in the right auditory cortex using a discrete spatiotemporal source analysis, was selectively enhanced in older musicians. This suggests that older musicians use a compensatory strategy to overcome age-related decline in peripheral and exogenous processing of acoustic information.
authors.affiliation: Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Electronic address: bzendel@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Benjamin Rich
authors.initials: BR
authors.lastname: Zendel
authors.forename: Claude
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Alain
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001303:Auditory Cortex / Q000473:pathology* / Q000502:physiology*; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009146:Music; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Aging; Auditory; Auditory cortex; Event-related potentials; Musical training