The effect of musicianship, contralateral noise, and ear of presentation on the detection of changes in temporal fine structure

The relationship between interaural delay in binaural gap detection and sensitivity to temporal fine structure in young adults with or without musical training experience

Humans can detect the presence of a break in interaural correlation (BIC, also called binaural gap) even if a large interaural time delay (ITD) is introduced, which is important for detecting, recognizing, and localizing sounds in everyday environments. To investigate the relationship between interaural delay in binaural gap detection and the sensitivity of temporal fine structure (TFS), 40 young college students with normal hearing took the BIC delay threshold test, the TFS1 test (the test of monaural TFS sensitivity), and the TFS-AF test (the test of binaural TFS sensitivity). All participants were asked whether they had any musical training experience in their childhood. Results showed that the BIC delay threshold was significantly correlated with the TFS1 test (r =−0.426, p = 0.006), but not with the TFS-AF performance (r =−0.005, p = 0.997). The correlation between BIC delay threshold and monaural TFS sensitivity was observed in the non-music training group (r =−0.508, p = 0.010), but not in the music training group (r =−0.290, p = 0.295). These findings suggest that the interaural delay in binaural gap detection is related to the monaural sensitivity of TFS, this significant correlation was mainly found in young adults without musical training experience.

No Influence of Musicianship on the Effect of Contralateral Stimulation on Frequency Selectivity

The efferent system may control the gain of the cochlea and thereby influence frequency selectivity. This effect can be assessed using contralateral stimulation (CS) applied to the ear opposite to that used to assess frequency selectivity. The effect of CS may be stronger for musicians than for nonmusicians. To assess whether this was the case, psychophysical tuning curves (PTCs) were compared for 12 musicians and 12 nonmusicians. The PTCs were measured with and without a 60-dB sound pressure level (SPL) pink-noise CS, using signal frequencies of 2 and 4 kHz. The sharpness of the PTCs was quantified using the measure Q10, the signal frequency divided by the PTC bandwidth measured 10 dB above the level at the tip. Q10 values were lower in the presence of the CS, but this effect did not differ significantly for musicians and nonmusicians. The main effect of group (musicians vs. nonmusicians) on the Q10 values was not significant. Overall, these results do not support the idea that musicianship enhances contralateral efferent gain control as measured using the effect of CS on PTCs.

Musicians Show Improved Speech Segregation in Competitive, Multi-Talker Cocktail Party Scenarios

Studies suggest that long-term music experience enhances the brain’s ability to segregate speech from noise. Musicians’ “speech-in-noise (SIN) benefit” is based largely on perception from simple figure-ground tasks rather than competitive, multi-talker scenarios that offer realistic spatial cues for segregation and engage binaural processing. We aimed to investigate whether musicians show perceptual advantages in cocktail party speech segregation in a competitive, multi-talker environment. We used the coordinate response measure (CRM) paradigm to measure speech recognition and localization performance in musicians vs. non-musicians in a simulated 3D cocktail party environment conducted in an anechoic chamber. Speech was delivered through a 16-channel speaker array distributed around the horizontal soundfield surrounding the listener. Participants recalled the color, number, and perceived location of target callsign sentences. We manipulated task difficulty by varying the number of additional maskers presented at other spatial locations in the horizontal soundfield (0–1–2–3–4–6–8 multi-talkers). Musicians obtained faster and better speech recognition amidst up to around eight simultaneous talkers and showed less noise-related decline in performance with increasing interferers than their non-musician peers. Correlations revealed associations between listeners’ years of musical training and CRM recognition and working memory. However, better working memory correlated with better speech streaming. Basic (QuickSIN) but not more complex (speech streaming) SIN processing was still predicted by music training after controlling for working memory. Our findings confirm a relationship between musicianship and naturalistic cocktail party speech streaming but also suggest that cognitive factors at least partially drive musicians’ SIN advantage.