title: Psychophysical auditory filter estimates reveal sharper cochlear tuning in musicians.
abstract: Musicianship confers enhancements to hearing at nearly all levels of the auditory system from periphery to percept. Musicians' superior psychophysical abilities are particularly evident in spectral discrimination and noise-degraded listening tasks, achieving higher perceptual sensitivity than their nonmusician peers. Greater spectral acuity implies that musicianship may increase auditory filter selectivity. This hypothesis was directly tested by measuring both forward- and simultaneous-masked psychophysical tuning curves. Sharper filter tuning (i.e., higher Q10) was observed in musicians compared to nonmusicians. Findings suggest musicians' pervasive listening benefits may be facilitated, in part, by superior spectral processing/decomposition as early as the auditory periphery.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Intelligent Systems, University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee 38105 g.bidelman@memphis.edu.
authors.forename: Gavin M
authors.initials: GM
authors.lastname: Bidelman
authors.affiliation: School of Communication Sciences & Disorders, University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee 38105 jschug@memphis.edu.
authors.forename: Jonathan M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Schug
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112 skyler.jennings@hsc.utah.edu.
authors.forename: Skyler G
authors.initials: SG
authors.lastname: Jennings
authors.affiliation: School of Communication Sciences & Disorders, University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee 38105 sbhagat@memphis.edu.
authors.forename: Shaum P
authors.initials: SP
authors.lastname: Bhagat
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D003051:Cochlea / Q000502:physiology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009146:Music; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D010897:Pitch Discrimination; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D055815:Young Adult