Long-term music training can positively impact speech processing. A recent framework developed to explain such cross-domain plasticity posits that music training-related advantages in speech processing are due to shared cognitive and perceptual processes between music and speech. Although perceptual and cognitive processing advantages due to music training have been independently demonstrated, ...

Absolute pitch (AP) is possessed by only a small percentage of musicians (typically < 20%). From a sample of 46 early blind subjects, we identified 21 who had musical training, 12 of whom (57.1%) reported having AP, reflecting markedly increased prevalence compared to sighted musicians, despite the fact that mean age of commencement of musical training was significantly later among blind than s...

Peripheral nervous system can influence learning and memory functions by increasing the activity level (‘arousal’) of the system with increasing task difficulty. Several studies show that musicians discriminate auditory stimuli more effectively both neurally and behaviourally. Yet, the effects of individual peripheral nervous responses or personality during auditory learning have not studied in...

Meg responses from musicians who had absolute pitch and from non-musicians were measured while they received different auditory stimuli. The parameters of single equivalent current dipoles (ECDs) were calculated for the N1m responses occurring in the auditory cortex. The location of the ECD for the noise burst was significantly posterior to the ECDs for the tones in the two hemispheres of the m...

Musical competence may confer cognitive advantages that extend beyond processing of familiar musical sounds. Behavioural evidence indicates a general enhancement of both working memory and attention in musicians. It is possible that musicians, due to their training, are better able to maintain focus on task-relevant stimuli, a skill which is crucial to working memory. We measured the blood oxyg...

THE EFFECT OF MUSICAL TRAINING ON VERBAL AND TONALWORKING MEMORYby CHING-I LUAugust 2012Advisor: Dr. Margaret GreenwaldMajor: Communication Sciences and DisordersDegree: Doctor of Philosophy This dissertation explored the translation from print to sound of the tonal languageMandarin versus English versus musical notation in healthy volunteers. The performance ofm...

The present study addressed the effects of musicianship on neural and behavioral discrimination of Western music chords. In abstract oddball paradigms, minor chords and inverted major chords were presented in the context of major chords to musician and non-musician participants in a passive listening task (with EEG recordings) and in an active discrimination task. Both sinusoidal sounds and har...

Many investigations have reported structural, functional, and cognitive changes in the brains of musicians, which occur as a result of many years of musical practice. We aimed to investigate if intensive, long-term musical practice is associated with improved visual memory ability. Musicians and non-musicians, who were comparable in age, gender, and education, were submitted to a visual memory ...

The relationship between processing of speech and music was explored here via the linguistic vehicle of lexical tone. People with amusia have been found to be impaired on linguistic tasks; we examined whether absolute pitch (AP) possessors have an advantage on linguistic tasks. Participants were 3 groups of monolingual Australian-English speakers: non-AP musicians (musically-trained individuals...

Musical expertise entails meticulous stylistic specialisation and enculturation. Even so, research on musical training effects has focused on generalised comparisons between musicians and non-musicians, and cross-cultural work addressing specialised expertise has traded cultural specificity and sensitivity for other methodological limitations. This study aimed to experimentally dissociate the e...