Enhanced brainstem encoding predicts musicians' perceptual advantages with pitch.

ABSTRACT: Important to Western tonal music is the relationship between pitches both within and between musical chords; melody and harmony are generated by combining pitches selected from the fixed hierarchical scales of music. It is of critical importance that musicians have the ability to detect and discriminate minute deviations in pitch in order to remain in tune with other members of their ensemble. Event-related potentials indicate that cortical mechanisms responsible for detecting mistuning and violations in pitch are more sensitive and accurate in musicians as compared with non-musicians. The aim of the present study was to address whether this superiority is also present at a subcortical stage of pitch processing. Brainstem frequency-following responses were recorded from musicians and non-m

SUBMITTER: Bidelman GM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3059719 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature