Behavioral and subcortical signatures of musical expertise in Mandarin Chinese speakers

Effect of musical expertise on the perception of duration and pitch in language: A cross-linguistic study

This study adopts a cross-linguistic perspective and investigates how musical expertise affects the perception of duration and pitch in language. Native speakers of Chinese (N = 44) and Estonian (N = 46), each group subdivided into musicians and non-musicians, participated in a mismatch negativity (MMN) experiment where they passively listened to both Chinese and Estonian stimuli, followed by a behavioral experiment where they attentively discriminated the stimuli in the non-native language (i.e., Chinese to Estonian participants and Estonian to Chinese participants). In both experiments, stimuli of duration change, pitch change, and duration plus pitch change were discriminated. We found higher behavioral sensitivity among Chinese musicians than non-musicians in perceiving the duration change in Estonian and higher behavioral sensitivity among Estonian musicians than non-musicians in perceiving all types of changes in Chinese, but no corresponding effect was found in the MMN results, which suggests a more salient effect of musical expertise on foreign language processing when attention is required. Secondly, Chinese musicians did not outperform non-musicians in attentively discriminating the pitch-related stimuli in Estonian, suggesting that musical expertise can be overridden by tonal language experience when perceiving foreign linguistic pitch, especially when an attentive discrimination task is administered. Thirdly, we found larger MMN among Chinese and Estonian musicians than their non-musician counterparts in perceiving the largest deviant (i.e., duration plus pitch) in their native language. Taken together, our results demonstrate a positive effect of musical expertise on language processing.

Short- and long-term neuroplasticity interact during the perceptual learning of concurrent speech

Plasticity from auditory experience shapes the brain's encoding and perception of sound. However, whether such long-term plasticity alters the trajectory of short-term plasticity during speech processing has yet to be investigated. Here, we explored the neural mechanisms and interplay between short- and long-term neuroplasticity for rapid auditory perceptual learning of concurrent speech sounds in young, normal-hearing musicians and nonmusicians. Participants learned to identify double-vowel mixtures during ~ 45 min training sessions recorded simultaneously with high-density electroencephalography (EEG). We analyzed frequency-following responses (FFRs) and event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate neural correlates of learning at subcortical and cortical levels, respectively. Although both groups showed rapid perceptual learning, musicians showed faster behavioral decisions than nonmusicians overall. Learning-related changes were not apparent in brainstem FFRs. However, plasticity was highly evident in cortex, where ERPs revealed unique hemispheric asymmetries between groups suggestive of different neural strategies (musicians: right hemisphere bias; nonmusicians: left hemisphere). Source reconstruction and the early (150-200 ms) time course of these effects localized learning-induced cortical plasticity to auditory-sensory brain areas. Our findings reinforce the domain-general benefits of musicianship but reveal that successful speech sound learning is driven by a critical interplay between long- and short-term mechanisms of auditory plasticity, which first emerge at a cortical level.

Improved Auditory Function Caused by Music Versus Foreign Language Training at School Age: Is There a Difference?

In adults, music and speech share many neurocognitive functions, but how do they interact in a developing brain? We compared the effects of music and foreign language training on auditory neurocognition in Chinese children aged 8–11 years. We delivered group-based training programs in music and foreign language using a randomized controlled trial. A passive control group was also included. Before and after these year-long extracurricular programs, auditory event-related potentials were recorded (n = 123 and 85 before and after the program, respectively). Through these recordings, we probed early auditory predictive brain processes.

To our surprise, the language program facilitated the children’s early auditory predictive brain processes significantly more than did the music program. This facilitation was most evident in pitch encoding when the experimental paradigm was musically relevant. When these processes were probed by a paradigm more focused on basic sound features, we found early predictive pitch encoding to be facilitated by music training.

Thus, a foreign language program is able to foster auditory and music neurocognition, at least in tonal language speakers, in a manner comparable to that by a music program. Our results support the tight coupling of musical and linguistic brain functions also in the developing brain.