Musicians and tone-language speakers share enhanced brainstem encoding but not perceptual benefits for musical pitch.

ABSTRACT: Behavioral and neurophysiological transfer effects from music experience to language processing are well-established but it is currently unclear whether or not linguistic expertise (e.g., speaking a tone language) benefits music-related processing and its perception. Here, we compare brainstem responses of English-speaking musicians/non-musicians and native speakers of Mandarin Chinese elicited by tuned and detuned musical chords, to determine if enhancements in subcortical processing translate to improvements in the perceptual discrimination of musical pitch. Relative to non-musicians, both musicians and Chinese had stronger brainstem representation of the defining pitches of musical sequences. In contrast, two behavioral pitch discrimination tasks revealed that neither Chinese nor non-mu

SUBMITTER: Bidelman GM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3159732 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature