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Common Parietal Activation In Musical Mental Transformations Across Pitch And Time, Nicholas E.V. Foster, Andrea Halpern, Robert J. Zatorre

Andrea Halpern

We previously observed that mental manipulation of the pitch level or temporal organization of melodies results in functional activation in the human intraparietal sulcus (IPS), a region also associated with visuospatial transformation and numerical calculation. Two outstanding questions about these musical transformations are whether pitch and time depend on separate or common processing in IPS, and whether IPS recruitment in melodic tasks varies depending upon the degree of transformation required (as it does in mental rotation). In the present study we sought to answer these questions by applying functional magnetic resonance imaging while musicians performed closely matched mental transposition (pitch …

Musical Training Influences Auditory Temporal Processing, Saravanan Elangovan, Nicole Payne, Jacek Smurzynski, Marc A. Fagelson

Jacek Smurzynski

Background: A link between musical expertise and auditory temporal processing abilities was examined.

Material and methods: Trained musicians (n=13) and non-musicians (n=12) were tested on speech tasks (phonetic identification, speech recognition in noise) and non-speech tasks (temporal gap detection).

Results: Results indicated musicians had shorter between-channel gap detection thresholds and sharper phonetic identification functions, suggesting that perceptual reorganization following musical training assists basic temporal auditory processes.

Conclusions: In general, our results provide a conceptual advance in understanding how musical training influences speech processing, an ability which, when impaired, can affect speech and reading competency.

Musical Training Influences Auditory Temporal Processing, Saravanan Elangovan, Nicole Payne, Jacek Smurzynski, Marc A. Fagelson

Marc A. Fagelson

Background: A link between musical expertise and auditory temporal processing abilities was examined.

Material and methods: Trained musicians (n=13) and non-musicians (n=12) were tested on speech tasks (phonetic identification, speech recognition in noise) and non-speech tasks (temporal gap detection).

Results: Results indicated musicians had shorter between-channel gap detection thresholds and sharper phonetic identification functions, suggesting that perceptual reorganization following musical training assists basic temporal auditory processes.

Conclusions: In general, our results provide a conceptual advance in understanding how musical training influences speech processing, an ability which, when impaired, can affect speech and reading competency.

Musical Training Influences Auditory Temporal Processing, Saravanan Elangovan, Nicole Payne, Jacek Smurzynski, Marc A. Fagelson

Saravanan Elangovan

Background: A link between musical expertise and auditory temporal processing abilities was examined.

Material and methods: Trained musicians (n=13) and non-musicians (n=12) were tested on speech tasks (phonetic identification, speech recognition in noise) and non-speech tasks (temporal gap detection).

Results: Results indicated musicians had shorter between-channel gap detection thresholds and sharper phonetic identification functions, suggesting that perceptual reorganization following musical training assists basic temporal auditory processes.

Conclusions: In general, our results provide a conceptual advance in understanding how musical training influences speech processing, an ability which, when impaired, can affect speech and reading competency.