title: Listening to the brainstem: musicianship enhances intelligibility of subcortical representations for speech.
abstract: Auditory experiences including musicianship and bilingualism have been shown to enhance subcortical speech encoding operating below conscious awareness. Yet, the behavioral consequence of such enhanced subcortical auditory processing remains undetermined. Exploiting their remarkable fidelity, we examined the intelligibility of auditory playbacks (i.e., "sonifications") of brainstem potentials recorded in human listeners. We found naive listeners' behavioral classification of sonifications was faster and more categorical when evaluating brain responses recorded in individuals with extensive musical training versus those recorded in nonmusicians. These results reveal stronger behaviorally relevant speech cues in musicians' neural representations and demonstrate causal evidence that superior subcortical processing creates a more comprehensible speech signal (i.e., to naive listeners). We infer that neural sonifications of speech-evoked brainstem responses could be used in the early detection of speech-language impairments due to neurodegenerative disorders, or in objectively measuring individual differences in speech reception solely by listening to individuals' brain activity.
authors: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, Ontario L5L 1C6, Canada and.
authors: Michael W
authors: MW
authors: Weiss
authors: Institute for Intelligent Systems and School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee 38105 g.bidelman@memphis.edu.
authors: Gavin M
authors: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1821-3261
authors: GM
authors: Bidelman
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001933:Brain Stem / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D004569:Electroencephalography; D016057:Evoked Potentials, Auditory, Brain Stem / Q000502:physiology; D056228:Feedback, Sensory / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006309:Hearing / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007360:Intelligence; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D009146:Music; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: brainstem response; categorical speech perception; experience-dependent plasticity; frequency-following response
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