Previous studies suggest that musicians show an advantage in processing and encoding foreign-language lexical tones. The current experiments examined whether musical experience influences the perceptual learning of lexical tone categories. Experiment I examined whether musicians with no prior experience of tonal languages differed from nonmusicians in the perception of a lexical tone continuum....

BACKGROUND Above-average levels of psychopathology have been demonstrated convincingly in groups of outstanding individuals working in the arts. Currently, jazz musicians have not been studied in this regard. AIMS To investigate any evidence of psychopathology in a group of eminent jazz musicians. METHOD Biographical material relating to 40 eminent American modern jazz musicians was reviewe...

The effects of musical training on the early auditory cortical response to pitch transitions in music were investigated by use of the change-N1 component of auditory event-related potentials. Musicians and non-musicians were presented with music stimuli comprising a melody and a harmony under various listening conditions. First, when the subjects played a video game and were instructed to ignor...

Review of the medical and audiologic literature indicates that MIHL occurs among musicians, with varying incidences ranging up to 58% in classical musicians and up to 30% in rock/pop musicians. In addition, studies show that musicians routinely face sound pressure levels (SPLs) in potentially hazardous ranges, extending up to 120-130 dBA only 3 feet from the speaker in amplified rock/pop bands,...

The influence of music on the human brain has been recently investigated in numerous studies. Several investigations have shown that structural and functional cerebral neuroplastic processes emerge as a result of long-term musical training, which in turn may produce cognitive differences between musicians and non-musicians. Musicians can be considered ideal cases for studies on brain adaptation...

This paper discusses one particular mapping for a new gestural instrument called the AirSticks. This mapping was designed to be used for improvised or rehearsed duos and restricts the AirSticks performer to only utilising the sound source of the other musician playing an acoustic instrument. Several pieces with different musicians were performed and documented, musicians were observed and inter...

Objective: The objectives of this study were: (1) to determine if musicians have a better ability to detect frequency changes under quiet and noisy conditions; (2) to use the acoustic change complex (ACC), a type of electroencephalographic (EEG) response, to understand the neural substrates of musician vs. non-musician difference in frequency change detection abilities. Methods: Twenty-four you...

Groove is often described as a musical quality that can induce movement in a listener. This study examines the effects of listening to groove music on corticospinal excitability. Musicians and non-musicians listened to high-groove music, low-groove music, and spectrally matched noise, while receiving single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the primary motor cortex either on-be...

Interoception is defined as the perceptual activity involved in the processing of internal bodily signals. While the ability of internal perception is considered a relatively stable trait, recent data suggest that learning to integrate multisensory information can modulate it. Making music is a uniquely rich multisensory experience that has shown to alter motor, sensory, and multimodal represen...