Music training and speech perception: a gene-environment interaction

Generalization of auditory expertise in audio engineers and instrumental musicians

From auditory perception to general cognition, the ability to play a musical instrument has been associated with skills both related and unrelated to music. However, it is unclear if these effects are bound to the specific characteristics of musical instrument training, as little attention has been paid to other populations such as audio engineers and designers whose auditory expertise may match or surpass that of musicians in specific auditory tasks or more naturalistic acoustic scenarios. We explored this possibility by comparing students of audio engineering (n = 20) to matched conservatory-trained instrumentalists (n = 24) and to naive controls (n = 20) on measures of auditory discrimination, auditory scene analysis, and speech in noise perception. We found that audio engineers and performing musicians had generally lower psychophysical thresholds than controls, with pitch perception showing the largest effect size. Compared to controls, audio engineers could better memorise and recall auditory scenes composed of non-musical sounds, whereas instrumental musicians performed best in a sustained selective attention task with two competing streams of tones. Finally, in a diotic speech-in-babble task, musicians showed lower signal-to-noise-ratio thresholds than both controls and engineers; however, a follow-up online study did not replicate this musician advantage. We also observed differences in personality that might account for group-based self-selection biases. Overall, we showed that investigating a wider range of forms of auditory expertise can help us corroborate (or challenge) the specificity of the advantages previously associated with musical instrument training.

Temporal deployment of attention in musicians: Evidence from an attentional blink paradigm

The generalization of music training to unrelated nonmusical domains is well established and may reflect musicians' superior ability to regulate attention. We investigated the temporal deployment of attention in musicians and nonmusicians using scalp-recording of event-related potentials in an attentional blink (AB) paradigm. Participants listened to rapid sequences of stimuli and identified target and probe sounds. The AB was defined as a probe identification deficit when the probe closely follows the target. The sequence of stimuli was preceded by a neutral or informative cue about the probe position within the sequence. Musicians outperformed nonmusicians in identifying the target and probe. In both groups, cueing improved target and probe identification and reduced the AB. The informative cue elicited a sustained potential, which was more prominent in musicians than nonmusicians over left temporal areas and yielded a larger N1 amplitude elicited by the target. The N1 was larger in musicians than nonmusicians, and its amplitude over the left frontocentral cortex of musicians correlated with accuracy. Together, these results reveal musicians' superior ability to regulate attention, allowing them to prepare for incoming stimuli, thereby improving sound object identification. This capacity to manage attentional resources to optimize task performance may generalize to nonmusical activities.

Heritability of Childhood Music Engagement and Associations with Language and Executive Function: Insights from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study

Music engagement is a powerful, influential experience that often begins early in life. Music engagement is moderately heritable in adults (~ 41-69%), but fewer studies have examined genetic influences on childhood music engagement, including their association with language and executive functions. Here we explored genetic and environmental influences on music listening and instrument playing (including singing) in the baseline assessment of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study. Parents reported on their 9-10-year-old children's music experiences (N = 11,876 children; N = 1543 from twin pairs). Both music measures were explained primarily by shared environmental influences. Instrument exposure (but not frequency of instrument engagement) was associated with language skills (r = .27) and executive functions (r = .15-0.17), and these associations with instrument engagement were stronger than those for music listening, visual art, or soccer engagement. These findings highlight the role of shared environmental influences between early music experiences, language, and executive function, during a formative time in development.

The Association between Music and Language in Children: A State-of-the-Art Review

Music and language are two complex systems that specifically characterize the human communication toolkit. There has been a heated debate in the literature on whether music was an evolutionary precursor to language or a byproduct of cognitive faculties that developed to support language. The present review of existing literature about the relationship between music and language highlights that music plays a critical role in language development in early life. Our findings revealed that musical properties, such as rhythm and melody, could affect language acquisition in semantic processing and grammar, including syntactic aspects and phonological awareness. Overall, the results of the current review shed further light on the complex mechanisms involving the music-language link, highlighting that music plays a central role in the comprehension of language development from the early stages of life.

Short-term training helps second-language learners read like native readers: An ERP study

This randomized controlled trial study aimed to examine what experience other than immersion may help adult learners read with native-like neural responses. We compared a group of 13 native Chinese English learners completing English letter-sound association training with another group of 12 completing visual symbol-sound association training and included one group of native English readers as the reference. The results showed that after three hours of training, all learners no longer showed attenuated cross-modal mismatch negativity (MMN) to English letter-sound integration as in the pretest. After six hours of training, the learners receiving English letter-sound association training showed enhanced cross-modal MMN and theta oscillations, as native English readers did. The enhanced neural responses were significantly correlated with better phonological awareness. Thus, with training specific to critical second language reading skills of appropriate dosages, adult learners can overcome the constraints of their native language background and learn to read with native-like neural responses.

Exploring the genetics of rhythmic perception and musical engagement in the Vanderbilt Online Musicality Study

Uncovering the genetic underpinnings of musical ability and engagement is a foundational step for exploring their wide-ranging associations with cognition, health, and neurodevelopment. Prior studies have focused on using twin and family designs, demonstrating moderate heritability of musical phenotypes. The current study used genome-wide complex trait analysis and polygenic score (PGS) approaches utilizing genotype data to examine genetic influences on two musicality traits (rhythmic perception and music engagement) in N = 1792 unrelated adults in the Vanderbilt Online Musicality Study. Meta-analyzed heritability estimates (including a replication sample of Swedish individuals) were 31% for rhythmic perception and 12% for self-reported music engagement. A PGS derived from a recent study on beat synchronization ability predicted both rhythmic perception (β = 0.11) and music engagement (β = 0.19) in our sample, suggesting that genetic influences underlying self-reported beat synchronization ability also influence individuals' rhythmic discrimination aptitude and the degree to which they engage in music. Cross-trait analyses revealed a modest contribution of PGSs from several nonmusical traits (from the cognitive, personality, and circadian chronotype domains) to individual differences in musicality (β = -0.06 to 0.07). This work sheds light on the complex relationship between the genetic architecture of musical rhythm processing, beat synchronization, music engagement, and other nonmusical traits.

The Musical Abilities, Pleiotropy, Language, and Environment (MAPLE) Framework for Understanding Musicality-Language Links Across the Lifespan

Using individual differences approaches, a growing body of literature finds positive associations between musicality and language-related abilities, complementing prior findings of links between musical training and language skills. Despite these associations, musicality has been often overlooked in mainstream models of individual differences in language acquisition and development. To better understand the biological basis of these individual differences, we propose the Musical Abilities, Pleiotropy, Language, and Environment (MAPLE) framework. This novel integrative framework posits that musical and language-related abilities likely share some common genetic architecture (i.e., genetic pleiotropy) in addition to some degree of overlapping neural endophenotypes, and genetic influences on musically and linguistically enriched environments. Drawing upon recent advances in genomic methodologies for unraveling pleiotropy, we outline testable predictions for future research on language development and how its underlying neurobiological substrates may be supported by genetic pleiotropy with musicality. In support of the MAPLE framework, we review and discuss findings from over seventy behavioral and neural studies, highlighting that musicality is robustly associated with individual differences in a range of speech-language skills required for communication and development. These include speech perception-in-noise, prosodic perception, morphosyntactic skills, phonological skills, reading skills, and aspects of second/foreign language learning. Overall, the current work provides a clear agenda and framework for studying musicality-language links using individual differences approaches, with an emphasis on leveraging advances in the genomics of complex musicality and language traits.

Elements of musical and dance sophistication predict musical groove perception

Listening to groovy music is an enjoyable experience and a common human behavior in some cultures. Specifically, many listeners agree that songs they find to be more familiar and pleasurable are more likely to induce the experience of musical groove. While the pleasurable and dance-inducing effects of musical groove are omnipresent, we know less about how subjective feelings toward music, individual musical or dance experiences, or more objective musical perception abilities are correlated with the way we experience groove. Therefore, the present study aimed to evaluate how musical and dance sophistication relates to musical groove perception. One-hundred 24 participants completed an online study during which they rated 20 songs, considered high- or low-groove, and completed the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index, the Goldsmiths Dance Sophistication Index, the Beat and Meter Sensitivity Task, and a modified short version of the Profile for Music Perception Skills. Our results reveal that measures of perceptual abilities, musical training, and social dancing predicted the difference in groove rating between high- and low-groove music. Overall, these findings support the notion that listeners' individual experiences and predispositions may shape their perception of musical groove, although other causal directions are also possible. This research helps elucidate the correlates and possible causes of musical groove perception in a wide range of listeners.

Towards a Native OPERA Hypothesis: Musicianship and English Stress Perception

Musical experience facilitates speech perception. French musicians, to whom stress is foreign, have been found to perceive English stress more accurately than French non-musicians. This study investigated whether this musical advantage also applies to native listeners. English musicians and non-musicians completed an English stress discrimination task and two control tasks. With age, non-verbal intelligence and short-term memory controlled, the musicians exhibited a perceptual advantage relative to the non-musicians. This perceptual advantage was equally potent to both trochaic and iambic stress patterns. In terms of perceptual strategy, the two groups showed differential use of acoustic cues for iambic but not trochaic stress. Collectively, the results could be taken to suggest that musical experience enhances stress discrimination even among native listeners. Remarkably, this musical advantage is highly consistent and does not particularly favour either stress pattern. For iambic stress, the musical advantage appears to stem from the differential use of acoustic cues by musicians. For trochaic stress, the musical advantage may be rooted in enhanced durational sensitivity.

Working-Memory, Alpha-Theta Oscillations and Musical Training in Older Age: Research Perspectives for Speech-on-speech Perception

During the normal course of aging, perception of speech-on-speech or “cocktail party” speech and use of working memory (WM) abilities change. Musical training, which is a complex activity that integrates multiple sensory modalities and higher-order cognitive functions, reportedly benefits both WM performance and speech-on-speech perception in older adults. This mini-review explores the relationship between musical training, WM and speech-on-speech perception in older age (> 65 years) through the lens of the Ease of Language Understanding (ELU) model. Linking neural-oscillation literature associating speech-on-speech perception and WM with alpha-theta oscillatory activity, we propose that two stages of speech-on-speech processing in the ELU are underpinned by WM-related alpha-theta oscillatory activity, and that effects of musical training on speech-on-speech perception may be reflected in these frequency bands among older adults.

Improved Auditory Function Caused by Music Versus Foreign Language Training at School Age: Is There a Difference?

In adults, music and speech share many neurocognitive functions, but how do they interact in a developing brain? We compared the effects of music and foreign language training on auditory neurocognition in Chinese children aged 8–11 years. We delivered group-based training programs in music and foreign language using a randomized controlled trial. A passive control group was also included. Before and after these year-long extracurricular programs, auditory event-related potentials were recorded (n = 123 and 85 before and after the program, respectively). Through these recordings, we probed early auditory predictive brain processes.

To our surprise, the language program facilitated the children’s early auditory predictive brain processes significantly more than did the music program. This facilitation was most evident in pitch encoding when the experimental paradigm was musically relevant. When these processes were probed by a paradigm more focused on basic sound features, we found early predictive pitch encoding to be facilitated by music training.

Thus, a foreign language program is able to foster auditory and music neurocognition, at least in tonal language speakers, in a manner comparable to that by a music program. Our results support the tight coupling of musical and linguistic brain functions also in the developing brain.

No Evidence That Music Training Benefits Speech Perception in Hearing-Impaired Listeners: A Systematic Review

As musicians have been shown to have a range of superior auditory skills to non-musicians (e.g., pitch discrimination ability), it has been hypothesized by many researchers that music training can have a beneficial effect on speech perception in populations with hearing impairment. This hypothesis relies on an assumption that the benefits seen in musicians are due to their training and not due to innate skills that may support successful musicianship. This systematic review examined the evidence from 13 longitudinal training studies that tested the hypothesis that music training has a causal effect on speech perception ability in hearing-impaired listeners. The papers were evaluated for quality of research design and appropriate analysis techniques. Only 4 of the 13 papers used a research design that allowed a causal relation between music training and outcome benefits to be validly tested, and none of those 4 papers with a better quality study design demonstrated a benefit of music training for speech perception. In spite of the lack of valid evidence in support of the hypothesis, 10 of the 13 papers made claims of benefits of music training, showing a propensity for confirmation bias in this area of research. It is recommended that future studies that aim to evaluate the association of speech perception ability and music training use a study design that differentiates the effects of training from those of innate perceptual and cognitive skills in the participants.

Is Phonological Awareness Related to Pitch, Rhythm, and Speech-in-Noise Discrimination in Young Children?

Purpose Phonological awareness (PA) requires the complex integration of language, speech, and auditory processing abilities. Enhanced pitch and rhythm discrimination have been shown to improve PA and speech-in-noise (SiN) discrimination. The screening of pitch and rhythm discrimination, if nonlinguistic correlates of these abilities, could contribute to screening procedures prior to diagnostic assessment. This research aimed to determine the association of PA abilities with pitch, rhythm, and SiN discrimination in children aged 5-7 years old. Method Forty-one participants' pitch, rhythm, and SiN discrimination and PA abilities were evaluated. To control for confounding factors, including biological and environmental risk exposure and gender differences, typically developing male children from high socioeconomic statuses were selected. Pearson correlation was used to identify associations between variables, and stepwise regression analysis was used to identify possible predictors of PA. Results Correlations of medium strength were identified between PA and pitch, rhythm, and SiN discrimination. Pitch and diotic digit-in-noise discrimination formed the strongest regression model (adjusted R ² = .4213, r = .649) for phoneme-grapheme correspondence. Conclusions The current study demonstrates predictive relationships between the complex auditory discrimination skills of pitch, rhythm, and diotic digit-in-noise recognition and foundational phonemic awareness and phonic skills in young males from high socioeconomic statuses. Pitch, rhythm, and digit-in-noise discrimination measures hold potential as screening measures for delays in phonemic awareness and phonic difficulties and as components of stimulation programs.

Long-Term Musical Training Alters Auditory Cortical Activity to the Frequency Change

Objective: The ability to detect frequency variation is a fundamental skill necessary for speech perception. It is known that musical expertise is associated with a range of auditory perceptual skills, including discriminating frequency change, which suggests the neural encoding of spectral features can be enhanced by musical training. In this study, we measured auditory cortical responses to frequency change in musicians to examine the relationships between N1/P2 responses and behavioral performance/musical training. Methods: Behavioral and electrophysiological data were obtained from professional musicians and age-matched non-musician participants. Behavioral data included frequency discrimination detection thresholds for no threshold-equalizing noise (TEN), +5, 0, and -5 signal-to-noise ratio settings. Auditory-evoked responses were measured using a 64-channel electroencephalogram (EEG) system in response to frequency changes in ongoing pure tones consisting of 250 and 4,000 Hz, and the magnitudes of frequency change were 10%, 25% or 50% from the base frequencies. N1 and P2 amplitudes and latencies as well as dipole source activation in the left and right hemispheres were measured for each condition. Results: Compared to the non-musician group, behavioral thresholds in the musician group were lower for frequency discrimination in quiet conditions only. The scalp-recorded N1 amplitudes were modulated as a function of frequency change. P2 amplitudes in the musician group were larger than in the non-musician group. Dipole source analysis showed that P2 dipole activity to frequency changes was lateralized to the right hemisphere, with greater activity in the musician group regardless of the hemisphere side. Additionally, N1 amplitudes to frequency changes were positively related to behavioral thresholds for frequency discrimination while enhanced P2 amplitudes were associated with a longer duration of musical training. Conclusions: Our results demonstrate that auditory cortical potentials evoked by frequency change are related to behavioral thresholds for frequency discrimination in musicians. Larger P2 amplitudes in musicians compared to non-musicians reflects musical training-induced neural plasticity.

The Acoustic Dimension of Reading: Does Musical Aptitude Affect Silent Reading Fluency?

Fluent reading in a foreign language includes a complex coordination process of visual and auditory nature as the reading brain transforms written symbols into speaking auditory patterns through subvocalization (inner voice). The auditory information activated for reading involves the projection of speech prosody and allows, beyond letters and words decoding, the recognition of word boundaries and the construction of the melodic contours of the phrase. On the one hand, phonological awareness and auditory working memory have been identified in the literature as relevant factors in the reading process as skilled readers keep the acoustic information in their auditory working memory to predict the construction of larger lexical units. On the other hand, we observed that the inclusion of musical aptitude as an element belonging to the acoustic dimension of the silent reading aptitude of adults learning a foreign language remains understudied. Therefore, this study examines the silent reading fluency of 117 Italian adult students of Spanish as a foreign language. Our main aim was to find a model that could show if linguistic, cognitive and musical skills influence adults’ silent reading fluency. We hypothesized that learners’ contextual word recognition ability in L1 and FL in addition to, phonological awareness, auditory working memory and musical aptitude, elements related to the acoustic dimension of reading, would influence adults’ silent reading fluency. Our structural modeling allows us to describe how these different variables interact to determine the silent reading fluency construct. In fact, the effect of musical aptitude on fluent silent reading in our model reveals to be stronger than phonological awareness or auditory working memory.

Head Movement Synchrony and Idea Generation Interference - Investigating Background Music Effects on Group Creativity

Previous studies have indicated that divergent idea integration is an effective way to foster extraordinary creativity in groups. This study posits that background music (BGM) may aid in eliciting this phenomenon. Here to describe the effectiveness of BGM on group creativity, we hypothesized and suggested different mechanisms that genre and valence attributes of BGM would lead to extraordinary creativity. The temporal co-ordination of head movement synchrony (HMS) was investigated as a non-verbal cue and we found significant HMS response levels to idea generation. While the HMS as response did not depend on the quality of the prior ideas; it led to higher divergence and originality in the successively generated ideas. Results of this study showed the dominant contribution of upbeat positive valence (UP) music, relative to other genres, in HMS leading to divergent ideas. Following this, the potential role of upbeat music in enhancing participant sociability and positive valence in enhancing cooperation level was discussed. Upbeat positive music may decrease judgmental behavior during creative group tasks and inspire participants to share divergent perspectives. The use of such music can encourage participants to share new perspectives and integrate ideas. It may also provide a potential explanation for the enhancing effect of upbeat positive music on creative outcomes in groups.

Selectively Enhanced Development of Working Memory in Musically Trained Children and Adolescents

In the current longitudinal study, we investigated the development of working memory in musically trained and nontrained children and adolescents, aged 9-20. We measured working memory with the Digit Span (DS) forwards and backwards tests (N = 106) and the Trail-Making A and B (TMT-A and B; N = 104) tests three times, in 2011, 2013, and 2016. We expected that musically trained participants would outperform peers with no musical training. Indeed, we found that the younger musically trained participants, in particular, outperformed their nontrained peers in the TMT-A, TMT-B and DS forwards tests. These tests all primarily require active maintenance of a rule in memory or immediate recall. In contrast, we found no group differences in the backwards test that requires manipulation and updating of information in working memory. These results suggest that musical training is more strongly associated with heightened working memory capacity and maintenance than enhanced working memory updating, especially in late childhood and early adolescence.

Individual differences in musical training and executive functions: A latent variable approach

Learning and performing music draw on a host of cognitive abilities, and previous research has postulated that musicians might have advantages in related cognitive processes. One such aspect of cognition that may be related to musical training is executive functions (EFs), a set of top-down processes that regulate behavior and cognition according to task demands. Previous studies investigating the link between musical training and EFs have yielded mixed results and are difficult to compare. In part, this is because most studies have looked at only one specific cognitive process, and even studies looking at the same process have used different experimental tasks. Furthermore, most correlational studies have used different "musician" and "non-musician" categorizations for their comparisons, so generalizing the findings is difficult. The present study provides a more comprehensive assessment of how individual differences in musical training relate to latent measures of three separable aspects of EFs. We administered a well-validated EF battery containing multiple tasks tapping the EF components of inhibition, shifting, and working memory updating (Friedman et al. in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 137, 201-225, 2008), as well as a comprehensive, continuous measure of musical training and sophistication (Müllensiefen et al., in PLoS ONE, 9, e89642, 2014). Musical training correlated with some individual EF tasks involving inhibition and working memory updating, but not with individual tasks involving shifting. However, musical training only predicted the latent variable of working memory updating, but not the latent variables of inhibition or shifting after controlling for IQ, socioeconomic status, and handedness. Although these data are correlational, they nonetheless suggest that musical experience places particularly strong demands specifically on working memory updating processes.

Cognitive Training Does Not Enhance General Cognition

Due to potential theoretical and societal implications, cognitive training has been one of the most influential topics in psychology and neuroscience. The assumption behind cognitive training is that one's general cognitive ability can be enhanced by practicing cognitive tasks or intellectually demanding activities. The hundreds of studies published so far have provided mixed findings and systematic reviews have reached inconsistent conclusions. To resolve these discrepancies, we carried out several meta-analytic reviews. The results are highly consistent across all the reviewed domains: minimal effect on domain-general cognitive skills. Crucially, the observed between-study variability is accounted for by design quality and statistical artefacts. The cognitive-training program of research has showed no appreciable benefits, and other more plausible practices to enhance cognitive performance should be pursued.

Change detection in complex auditory scenes is predicted by auditory memory, pitch perception, and years of musical training

Our world is a sonically busy place and we use both acoustic information and experience-based knowledge to make sense of the sounds arriving at our ears. The knowledge we gain through experience has the potential to shape what sounds are prioritized in a complex scene. There are many examples of how visual expertise influences how we perceive objects in visual scenes, but few studies examine how auditory expertise is associated with attentional biases toward familiar real-world sounds in complex scenes. In the current study, we investigated whether musical expertise is associated with the ability to detect changes to real-world sounds in complex auditory scenes, and whether any such benefit is specific to musical instrument sounds. We also examined whether change detection is better for human-generated sounds in general or only communicative human sounds. We found that musicians had less change deafness overall. All listeners were better at detecting human communicative sounds compared to human non-communicative sounds, but this benefit was driven by speech sounds and sounds that were vocally generated. Musical listening skill, speech-in-noise, and executive function abilities were used to predict rates of change deafness. Auditory memory, musical training, fine-grained pitch processing, and an interaction between training and pitch processing accounted for 45.8% of the variance in change deafness. To better understand perceptual and cognitive expertise, it may be more important to measure various auditory skills and relate them to each other, as opposed to comparing experts to non-experts.

Neural bases of enhanced attentional control: Lessons from action video game players

OBJECTIVES

The ability to resist distraction and focus on-task-relevant information while being responsive to changes in the environment is fundamental to goal-directed behavior. Such attentional control abilities are regulated by a constant interplay between previously characterized bottom-up and top-down attentional networks. Here we ask about the neural changes within these two attentional networks that may mediate enhanced attentional control.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

To address this question, we contrasted action video game players (AVGPs) and nonvideo game players (NVGPs) in a Posner-cueing paradigm, building on studies documenting enhanced attentional control in AVGPs.

RESULTS

Behavioral results indicated a trend for more efficient target processing in AVGPs, and better suppression in rare catch trials for which responses had to be withheld. During the cue period, AVGPs recruited the top-down network less than NVGPs, despite showing comparable validity effects, in line with a greater efficiency of that network in AVGPs. During target processing, as previously shown, recruitment of top-down areas correlated with greater processing difficulties, but only in NVGPs. AVGPs showed no such effect, but rather greater activation across the two networks. In particular, the right temporoparietal junction, middle frontal gyrus, and superior parietal cortex predicted better task performance in catch trials. A functional connectivity analysis revealed enhanced correlated activity in AVGPs compared to NVGPs between parietal and visual areas.

CONCLUSIONS

These results point to dynamic functional reconfigurations of top-down and bottom-up attentional networks in AVGPs as attentional demands vary. Aspects of this functional reconfiguration that may act as key signatures of high attentional control are discussed.

Musical Competence is Predicted by Music Training, Cognitive Abilities, and Personality

Individuals differ in musical competence, which we defined as the ability to perceive, remember, and discriminate sequences of tones or beats. We asked whether such differences could be explained by variables other than music training, including socioeconomic status (SES), short-term memory, general cognitive ability, and personality. In a sample of undergraduates, musical competence had positive simple associations with duration of music training, SES, short-term memory, general cognitive ability, and openness-to-experience. When these predictors were considered jointly, musical competence had positive partial associations with music training, general cognitive ability, and openness. Nevertheless, moderation analyses revealed that the partial association between musical competence and music training was evident only among participants who scored below the mean on our measure of general cognitive ability. Moreover, general cognitive ability and openness had indirect associations with musical competence by predicting music training, which in turn predicted musical competence. Musical competence appears to be the result of multiple factors, including but not limited to music training.

Musical competence and phoneme perception in a foreign language

We investigated whether musical competence was associated with the perception of foreign-language phonemes. The sample comprised adult native-speakers of English who varied in music training. The measures included tests of general cognitive abilities, melody and rhythm perception, and the perception of consonantal contrasts that were phonemic in Zulu but not in English. Music training was associated positively with performance on the tests of melody and rhythm perception, but not with performance on the phoneme-perception task. In other words, we found no evidence for transfer of music training to foreign-language speech perception. Rhythm perception was not associated with the perception of Zulu clicks, but such an association was evident when the phonemes sounded more similar to English consonants. Moreover, it persisted after controlling for general cognitive abilities and music training. By contrast, there was no association between melody perception and phoneme perception. The findings are consistent with proposals that music- and speech-perception rely on similar mechanisms of auditory temporal processing, and that this overlap is independent of general cognitive functioning. They provide no support, however, for the idea that music training improves speech perception.

Can very early music interventions promote at-risk infants' development?

Music and musical activities are often a natural part of parenting. As accumulating evidence shows, music can promote auditory and language development in infancy and early childhood. It may even help to support auditory and language skills in infants whose development is compromised by heritable conditions, like the reading deficit dyslexia, or by environmental factors, such as premature birth. For example, infants born to dyslexic parents can have atypical brain responses to speech sounds and subsequent challenges in language development. Children born very preterm, in turn, have an increased likelihood of sensory, cognitive, and motor deficits. To ameliorate these deficits, we have developed early interventions focusing on music. Preliminary results of our ongoing longitudinal studies suggest that music making and parental singing promote infants' early language development and auditory neural processing. Together with previous findings in the field, the present studies highlight the role of active, social music making in supporting auditory and language development in at-risk children and infants. Once completed, the studies will illuminate both risk and protective factors in development and offer a comprehensive model of understanding the promises of music activities in promoting positive developmental outcomes during the first years of life.

Neural correlates of enhanced executive functions: is less more?

Musical training has been associated with superior performance in various executive function tasks. To date, only a few neuroimaging studies have investigated the neural substrates of the supposed "musician advantage" in executive functions, precluding definite conclusions about its neural basis. Here, we provide a selective review of neuroimaging studies on plasticity and typical maturation of executive functions, with the aim of investigating how proficient performance in executive function tasks is reflected in brain activity. Specifically, we examine the evidence for the hypothesis that enhanced or mature executive functions are manifested as efficient use of neural systems supporting those functions. We also present preliminary results from a functional magnetic resonance imaging study suggesting-in line with this hypothesis-that musically trained adolescents recruit frontoparietal regions less strongly during executive functions tasks than untrained peers.

Musical Sophistication and the Effect of Complexity on Auditory Discrimination in Finnish Speakers

Musical experiences and native language are both known to affect auditory processing. The present work aims to disentangle the influences of native language phonology and musicality on behavioral and subcortical sound feature processing in a population of musically diverse Finnish speakers as well as to investigate the specificity of enhancement from musical training. Finnish speakers are highly sensitive to duration cues since in Finnish, vowel and consonant duration determine word meaning. Using a correlational approach with a set of behavioral sound feature discrimination tasks, brainstem recordings, and a musical sophistication questionnaire, we find no evidence for an association between musical sophistication and more precise duration processing in Finnish speakers either in the auditory brainstem response or in behavioral tasks, but they do show an enhanced pitch discrimination compared to Finnish speakers with less musical experience and show greater duration modulation in a complex task. These results are consistent with a ceiling effect set for certain sound features which corresponds to the phonology of the native language, leaving an opportunity for music experience-based enhancement of sound features not explicitly encoded in the language (such as pitch, which is not explicitly encoded in Finnish). Finally, the pattern of duration modulation in more musically sophisticated Finnish speakers suggests integrated feature processing for greater efficiency in a real world musical situation. These results have implications for research into the specificity of plasticity in the auditory system as well as to the effects of interaction of specific language features with musical experiences.

Speech-in-noise perception in musicians: A review

The ability to understand speech in the presence of competing sound sources is an important neuroscience question in terms of how the nervous system solves this computational problem. It is also a critical clinical problem that disproportionally affects the elderly, children with language-related learning disorders, and those with hearing loss. Recent evidence that musicians have an advantage on this multifaceted skill has led to the suggestion that musical training might be used to improve or delay the decline of speech-in-noise (SIN) function. However, enhancements have not been universally reported, nor have the relative contributions of different bottom-up versus top-down processes, and their relation to preexisting factors been disentangled. This information that would be helpful to establish whether there is a real effect of experience, what exactly is its nature, and how future training-based interventions might target the most relevant components of cognitive processes. These questions are complicated by important differences in study design and uneven coverage of neuroimaging modality. In this review, we aim to systematize recent results from studies that have specifically looked at musician-related differences in SIN by their study design properties, to summarize the findings, and to identify knowledge gaps for future work.

Convergent evidence for the molecular basis of musical traits

To obtain aggregate evidence for the molecular basis of musical abilities and the effects of music, we integrated gene-level data from 105 published studies across multiple species including humans, songbirds and several other animals and used a convergent evidence method to prioritize the top candidate genes. Several of the identified top candidate genes like EGR1, FOS, ARC, BDNF and DUSP1 are known to be activity-dependent immediate early genes that respond to sensory and motor stimuli in the brain. Several other top candidate genes like MAPK10, SNCA, ARHGAP24, TET2, UBE2D3, FAM13A and NUDT9 are located on chromosome 4q21-q24, on the candidate genomic region for music abilities in humans. Functional annotation analyses showed the enrichment of genes involved in functions like cognition, learning, memory, neuronal excitation and apoptosis, long-term potentiation and CDK5 signaling pathway. Interestingly, all these biological functions are known to be essential processes underlying learning and memory that are also fundamental for musical abilities including recognition and production of sound. In summary, our study prioritized top candidate genes related to musical traits.

Musicianship and Tone Language Experience Are Associated with Differential Changes in Brain Signal Variability

Musicianship has been associated with auditory processing benefits. It is unclear, however, whether pitch processing experience in nonmusical contexts, namely, speaking a tone language, has comparable associations with auditory processing. Studies comparing the auditory processing of musicians and tone language speakers have shown varying degrees of between-group similarity with regard to perceptual processing benefits and, particularly, nonlinguistic pitch processing. To test whether the auditory abilities honed by musicianship or speaking a tone language differentially impact the neural networks supporting nonlinguistic pitch processing (relative to timbral processing), we employed a novel application of brain signal variability (BSV) analysis. BSV is a metric of information processing capacity and holds great potential for understanding the neural underpinnings of experience-dependent plasticity. Here, we measured BSV in electroencephalograms of musicians, tone language-speaking nonmusicians, and English-speaking nonmusicians (controls) during passive listening of music and speech sound contrasts. Although musicians showed greater BSV across the board, each group showed a unique spatiotemporal distribution in neural network engagement: Controls had greater BSV for speech than music; tone language-speaking nonmusicians showed the opposite effect; musicians showed similar BSV for both domains. Collectively, results suggest that musical and tone language pitch experience differentially affect auditory processing capacity within the cerebral cortex. However, information processing capacity is graded: More experience with pitch is associated with greater BSV when processing this cue. Higher BSV in musicians may suggest increased information integration within the brain networks subserving speech and music, which may be related to their well-documented advantages on a wide variety of speech-related tasks.

Tuning the mind: Exploring the connections between musical ability and executive functions

A growing body of research suggests that musical experience and ability are related to a variety of cognitive abilities, including executive functioning (EF). However, it is not yet clear if these relationships are limited to specific components of EF, limited to auditory tasks, or reflect very general cognitive advantages. This study investigated the existence and generality of the relationship between musical ability and EFs by evaluating the musical experience and ability of a large group of participants and investigating whether this predicts individual differences on three different components of EF - inhibition, updating, and switching - in both auditory and visual modalities. Musical ability predicted better performance on both auditory and visual updating tasks, even when controlling for a variety of potential confounds (age, handedness, bilingualism, and socio-economic status). However, musical ability was not clearly related to inhibitory control and was unrelated to switching performance. These data thus show that cognitive advantages associated with musical ability are not limited to auditory processes, but are limited to specific aspects of EF. This supports a process-specific (but modality-general) relationship between musical ability and non-musical aspects of cognition.

Does Music Training Enhance Literacy Skills? A Meta-Analysis

Children's engagement in music practice is associated with enhancements in literacy-related language skills, as demonstrated by multiple reports of correlation across these two domains. Training studies have tested whether engaging in music training directly transfers benefit to children's literacy skill development. Results of such studies, however, are mixed. Interpretation of these mixed results is made more complex by the fact that a wide range of literacy-related outcome measures are used across these studies. Here, we address these challenges via a meta-analytic approach. A comprehensive literature review of peer-reviewed music training studies was built around key criteria needed to test the direct transfer hypothesis, including: (a) inclusion of music training vs. control groups; (b) inclusion of pre- vs. post-comparison measures, and (c) indication that reading instruction was held constant across groups. Thirteen studies were identified (n = 901). Two classes of outcome measures emerged with sufficient overlap to support meta-analysis: phonological awareness and reading fluency. Hours of training, age, and type of control intervention were examined as potential moderators. Results supported the hypothesis that music training leads to gains in phonological awareness skills. The effect isolated by contrasting gains in music training vs. gains in control was small relative to the large variance in these skills (d = 0.2). Interestingly, analyses revealed that transfer effects for rhyming skills tended to grow stronger with increased hours of training. In contrast, no significant aggregate transfer effect emerged for reading fluency measures, despite some studies reporting large training effects. The potential influence of other study design factors were considered, including intervention design, IQ, and SES. Results are discussed in the context of emerging findings that music training may enhance literacy development via changes in brain mechanisms that support both music and language cognition.

The role of rhythm in perceiving speech in noise: a comparison of percussionists, vocalists and non-musicians

The natural rhythms of speech help a listener follow what is being said, especially in noisy conditions. There is increasing evidence for links between rhythm abilities and language skills; however, the role of rhythm-related expertise in perceiving speech in noise is unknown. The present study assesses musical competence (rhythmic and melodic discrimination), speech-in-noise perception and auditory working memory in young adult percussionists, vocalists and non-musicians. Outcomes reveal that better ability to discriminate rhythms is associated with better sentence-in-noise (but not words-in-noise) perception across all participants. These outcomes suggest that sensitivity to rhythm helps a listener understand unfolding speech patterns in degraded listening conditions, and that observations of a "musician advantage" for speech-in-noise perception may be mediated in part by superior rhythm skills.

Predicting who takes music lessons: parent and child characteristics

Studies on associations between music training and cognitive abilities typically focus on the possible benefits of music lessons. Recent research suggests, however, that many of these associations stem from niche-picking tendencies, which lead certain individuals to be more likely than others to take music lessons, especially for long durations. Because the initial decision to take music lessons is made primarily by a child's parents, at least at younger ages, we asked whether individual differences in parents' personality predict young children's duration of training. Children between 7 and 9 years of age (N = 170) with varying amounts of music training completed a measure of IQ. Their parents provided demographic information as well as ratings of their own and their child's Big Five personality dimensions. Children's personality traits predicted duration of music training even when demographic variables and intelligence were held constant, replicating findings reported previously with 10- to 12-year-olds and 17-year-olds. A novel finding was that parents' openness-to-experience predicted children's duration of training, even when characteristics that pertained to children (demographic variables, intelligence, and personality) were controlled statistically. Our findings are indicative of passive and active gene-environment correlations, whereby genetic predispositions influence the likelihood that a child will have certain experiences, such as music training.