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...

Age-related declines in hearing abilities are common and can be attributed to changes in the peripheral and central levels of the auditory system. Although central auditory processing is enhanced in younger musicians, the influence of lifelong musicianship on age-related decline in central auditory processing has not yet been investigated. Therefore, the purpose of this dissertation was to inve...

In this article, the representation of male and female musicians is compared between three major genres music performance across geographical regions: United Kingdom, Europe, States. Relevant data artists from 40 world-class orchestras, competition brass bands, top-selling recorded popular groups were obtained websites respective organizations other authenticated sources. Information collected ...

Using fMRI, cerebral activations were studied in 24 classically-trained keyboard performers and 12 musically unskilled control subjects. Two groups of musicians were recruited: improvising (n=12) and score-dependent (non-improvising) musicians (n=12). While listening to both familiar and unfamiliar music, subjects either (covertly) appraised the presented music performance or imagined they were...