Musical training modulates the development of syntax processing in children

Both language and music consist of sequences that are structured according to syntactic regularities. We used two specific event-related brain potential (ERP) components to investigate music-syntactic processing in children: the ERAN (early right anterior negativity) and the N5. The neural resources underlying these processes have been posited to overlap with those involved in the processing of linguistic syntax. Thus, we expected children with specific language impairment (SLI, which is characterized by deficient processing of linguistic syntax) to demonstrate difficulties with music-syntactic processing. Such difficulties were indeed observed in the neural correlates of music-syntactic processing: neither an ERAN nor an N5 was elicited in children with SLI, whereas both components were evoked in age-matched control children with typical language development. Moreover, the amplitudes of ERAN and N5 were correlated with subtests of a language development test. These data provide evidence for a strong interrelation between the language and the music processing system, thereby setting the ground for possible effects of musical training in SLI therapy.

Exposure to musical rhythms has been shown to influence the perception of subsequently presented speech. Until now, this effect has only been studied in native language (L1) processing. The present study investigated whether rhythmic priming could also benefit second language (L2) processing. A musical rhythmic priming experiment was designed based on previous studies in L1 children. Over two experiments, L2 adult speakers of French were asked to detect grammatical errors in naturally spoken French sentences. Sentences were either preceded by a regular or an irregular musical rhythmic prime. We also assessed participants' French language level, rhythmic perception abilities, and musical training. In Experiment 1, 34 participants from various L1 backgrounds were recruited. In Experiment 2, 33 participants with a Romance-family L1 were recruited. For both experiments, grammaticality judgments did not significantly differ after regular versus irregular rhythmic primes. However, in collapsing both experiments, grammaticality judgments correlated significantly with rhythmic abilities, suggesting that participants with better rhythm perception were better at grammaticality judgment tasks. Moreover, with the same French level, musicians were better at detecting grammatical errors than those who had not received music training. We also found that the rhythmic priming effect (better grammatical judgments after regular than after irregular rhythms) increased with the number of years of musical training, suggesting that regular rhythmic primes may improve L2 perception in particular for musically trained participants. These results suggest some interesting connections between music training, second language learning, and rhythmic priming, that can be explored in future research.

We investigated the effects of selective attention and musical training on the processing ofharmonic expectations. In Experiment 1, participants with and without musical training were required to respond to the contour of melodies as they were presented with chord progressions that were highly expected, slightly unexpected, or extremely unexpected. Reaction time and accuracy results showed that when attention was focused on the melody, musically trained participants were still sensitive to different harmonic expectations, whereas participants with no musical training were undifferentiated across expectation conditions. In Experiment 2, participants were required to listen holistically to the entire chord progression and to rate their preference for each chord progression. Results from preference ratings showed that all the participants, with or without musical training, were sensitive to manipulations of harmonic expectations. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that changing the speed of presentation of chord progressions did not affect the pattern of results. The four experiments together highlight the importance of attentional focus in musical training, especially as it relates to the processing of harmonic expectations.

Music not only regulates mood but also promotes the development and maintenance of empathy and social understanding. Since empathy is crucial for well-being and indispensable in social life, it is necessary to develop strategies to improve empathy and prosocial behaviors. To fulfill this aim, researchers have extensively investigated the effect of intensive musical training on the development of empathy. Here, we first summarize evidence showing the powerful influence of musical training on the development of empathy and then discuss psychological mechanisms responsible for those observations. The conclusions drawn from most previous studies were mainly based on behavioral measurements, while the neural basis of musical training in the development of the empathic brain is still unclear. Fortunately, brain imaging research has contributed greatly to our understanding of the neural underpinnings associated with musical training and its possible connection to the development of the empathic brain. One of the most distinctive signatures of musical training is structural and functional changes of multiple brain regions, and such changes might be related to some of the empathic behaviors observed in musically trained children. Therefore, intensive musical training in childhood may increase levels of empathy, and applied research is required to optimize the training strategy before implementing music education in empathy regulation. Moreover, future longitudinal studies are needed to better understand neural mechanisms underlying the causal effect of musical training on empathy development. These findings have important implications for understanding the development of the empathic brain and for improving prosocial behaviors.

Previous research has demonstrated that musicians show superior neural sound discrimination when compared to non-musicians, and that these changes emerge with accumulation of training. Our aim was to investigate whether individual differences in executive functions predict training-related changes in neural sound discrimination. We measured event-related potentials induced by sound changes coupled with tests for executive functions in musically trained and non-trained children aged 9-11years and 13-15years. High performance in a set-shifting task, indexing cognitive flexibility, was linked to enhanced maturation of neural sound discrimination in both musically trained and non-trained children. Specifically, well-performing musically trained children already showed large mismatch negativity (MMN) responses at a young age as well as at an older age, indicating accurate sound discrimination. In contrast, the musically trained low-performing children still showed an increase in MMN amplitude with age, suggesting that they were behind their high-performing peers in the development of sound discrimination. In the non-trained group, in turn, only the high-performing children showed evidence of an age-related increase in MMN amplitude, and the low-performing children showed a small MMN with no age-related change. These latter results suggest an advantage in MMN development also for high-performing non-trained individuals. For the P3a amplitude, there was an age-related increase only in the children who performed well in the set-shifting task, irrespective of music training, indicating enhanced attention-related processes in these children. Thus, the current study provides the first evidence that, in children, cognitive flexibility may influence age-related and training-related plasticity of neural sound discrimination.

The psychology of musical ability : R. Shuter-Dyson and C. Gabriel: 2nd edn. Methuen, London (1981). xiv + 354 pp.

Biological impact of preschool music classes on processing speech in noise

Although it has been documented that musical training enhances multisensory integration, there is not yet a consensus as to how musical training influences the visual dominance effect in sensory dominance. The present study adopted the Colavita visual dominance paradigm, presenting auditory stimuli concurrent with visual stimuli, to investigate the visual dominance effect between music majors and nonmusic majors and compared the reaction time and response proportion of the two kinds of participants in the bimodal trials. The results showed that the proportion of simultaneous responses in bimodal trials of music majors is higher than that of nonmusic majors; the nonmusic majors show a greater difference between the proportion of “Visual-Auditory” trials and “Auditory-Visual” trials compared with the music majors; the ΔRT of the two responses of the nonsimultaneous bimodal trials of nonmusic majors is longer than that of music majors. The results indicated that musically trained individuals have an enhanced ability to bind visual and auditory information and show a lesser Colavita effect, that is, a reduced visual dominance effect, than their nonmusic major peers. We conclude that musical training extends beyond the field of vision or auditory domain, improves audiovisual integration, and reduces the visual dominance effect.

Investigations of musical training provide a way to study neural plasticity within the domain of music, as well as to study transfer effects to other domains (speech). Previous research has reported anatomical and functional differences between musically trained and non-trained individuals. However, these studies have not addressed several issues, including (1) nature vs nurture, (2) timing of musical training, and (3) the temporal aspect (e.g., rhythm) of musical training rather than the frequency aspect (e.g., pitch). The current study aims to examine of the causal effect of musical training on the sensitivity to temporal information in both music and speech sounds in infancy. In the study, 9-month-old infants were randomly assigned to a 12-session musical training condition vs a control condition (mirroring the design of Kuhl et al., 2003). During training, infants were exposed to uncommon metrical structure in music through social, multimodal, and structured activities while infants played freely in the control condition. After training, infants’ sensitivities to occasional violations in temporal structure were examined, both in music and speech. A traditional oddball paradigm was used and infants’ neural activities were recorded by MEG. Data from pilot participants will be discussed. [Research supported by I-LABS’ Developing Mind Project.]

BackgroundMusic-syntactic irregularities often co-occur with the processing of physical irregularities. In this study we constructed chord-sequences such that perceived differences in the cognitive processing between regular and irregular chords could not be due to the sensory processing of acoustic factors like pitch repetition or pitch commonality (the major component of ‘sensory dissonance’).Methodology/Principal FindingsTwo groups of subjects (musicians and nonmusicians) were investigated with electroencephalography (EEG). Irregular chords elicited an early right anterior negativity (ERAN) in the event-related brain potentials (ERPs). The ERAN had a latency of around 180 ms after the onset of the music-syntactically irregular chords, and had maximum amplitude values over right anterior electrode sites.Conclusions/SignificanceBecause irregular chords were hardly detectable based on acoustical factors (such as pitch repetition and sensory dissonance), this ERAN effect reflects for the most part cognitive (not sensory) components of regularity-based, music-syntactic processing. Our study represents a methodological advance compared to previous ERP-studies investigating the neural processing of music-syntactically irregular chords.

It is an open question whether cognitive processes of auditory perception that are mediated by functionally different cortices exhibit the same sensitivity to sedation. The auditory event-related potentials P1, mismatch negativity (MMN), and early right anterior negativity (ERAN) originate from different cortical areas and reflect different stages of auditory processing. The P1 originates mainly from the primary auditory cortex. The MMN is generated in or in the close vicinity of the primary auditory cortex but is also dependent on frontal sources. The ERAN mainly originates from frontal generators. The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of increasing propofol sedation on different stages of auditory processing as reflected in P1, MMN, and ERAN. The P1, the MMN, and the ERAN were recorded preoperatively in 18 patients during four levels of anesthesia adjusted with target-controlled infusion: awake state (target concentration of propofol 0.0 microg/ml), light sedation (0.5 microg/ml), deep sedation (1.5 microg/ml), and unconsciousness (2.5-3.0 microg/ml). Simultaneously, propofol anesthesia was assessed using the Bispectral Index. Propofol sedation resulted in a progressive decrease in amplitudes and an increase of latencies with a similar pattern for MMN and ERAN. MMN and ERAN were elicited during sedation but were abolished during unconsciousness. In contrast, the amplitude of the P1 was unchanged by sedation but markedly decreased during unconsciousness. The results indicate differential effects of propofol sedation on cognitive functions that involve mainly the auditory cortices and cognitive functions that involve the frontal cortices.

IntroductionMusical aesthetic emotions often display pleasant characteristics and function as a key reward mechanism in music appreciation. Previous research suggests that temporary mindfulness meditation training can enhance the aesthetic experiences associated with music aesthetic emotion processing (MAEP), fostering richer and more pleasant emotional responses. However, empirical evidence on the relationship between MAEP and mindfulness—particularly with respect to music genre, music training, and newly identified MAEP dimensions—remains limited. Therefore, this study, based on music-trained individuals and Chinese pop music, aims to investigate the effects of a 10-min mindfulness meditation training on MAEP.MethodsA 2 (group: Mindfulness Music Group [MMG] vs. Music Listening Group [MLG]) 3 (music style: R&B/Pop/Folk) mixed experimental design was adopted. Sixty-three Chinese college students with professional music training were randomly assigned to MMG (Male = 15, Female = 16) or MLG (Male = 12, Female = 20). Psychological measures included the Geneva Emotional Music Scale (GEMS), the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). Data were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance and independent samples t-tests.ResultsSelf-report results indicated no significant between-group differences in PANAS or FFMQ scores (all p > 0.05). Aesthetic attitudes were found to be significantly positively correlated with emotional experiences, suggesting that aesthetic attitudes may represent a novel MAEP dimension. Additionally, temporary mindfulness meditation training significantly improved both aesthetic attitudes and aesthetic judgment scores across all three music styles. However, enhancements in emotional experiences were observed only for Chinese Folk music. Compared with the MLG, the MMG demonstrated greater attention and altered time perception, along with reduced bodily control during music listening.ConclusionThese findings provide new insights into the relationship between mindfulness and MAEP and highlight a potential new dimension—aesthetic attitudes—that may contribute to the psychological mechanisms underlying MAEP.

Although studies of musical emotion often focus on the role of the composer and performer, the communicative process is also influenced by the listener’s musical background or experience. Given the equivocal nature of evidence regarding the effects of musical training, the role of listener expertise in conveyed musical emotion remains opaque. Here we examine emotional responses of musically trained listeners across two experiments using (1) eight measure excerpts, (2) musically resolved excerpts and compare them to responses collected from untrained listeners in Battcock and Schutz (2019). In each experiment 30 participants with six or more years of music training rated perceived emotion for 48 excerpts from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (WTC) using scales of valence and arousal. Models of listener ratings predict more variance in trained vs. untrained listeners across both experiments. More importantly however, we observe a shift in cue weights related to training. Using commonality analysis and Fischer Z score comparisons as well as margin of error calculations, we show that timing and mode affect untrained listeners equally, whereas mode plays a significantly stronger role than timing for trained listeners. This is not to say the emotional messages are less well recognized by untrained listeners—simply that training appears to shift the relative weight of cues used in making evaluations. These results clarify music training’s potential impact on the specific effects of cues in conveying musical emotion.

The potential usefulness of multidimensional scaling techniques in the perceptual analysis of ’’real world’’ underwater sounds was demonstrated. Nineteen observers (nine with musical training, ten without) used a five-point scale to judge the similarity of all possible pairs of eight passive sonar recordings. The eight s signals were selected to represent a range of common natural and man-made underwater sounds. These data were analyzed using the INDSCAL multidimensonal scaling model, revealing an interpretable two-dimensional psychological space. One of the psychological dimensions was interpreted as reflecting the overall shape of the 1/3-octave spectra of the eight signals, while the second was seen to reflect the prominence of a low-frequency periodicity present in some signals. Individual observer analysis revealed substantial differences between the musically trained and musically inexperienced observers in the relative importance or salience of the two dimensions. The relation of these findings to earlier work was discussed.

In 1923 the writer undertook a study of the phenomenal pitch of dyads. Before that date the issue had been clouded by two mutually exclusive sets of resultsthose of Stumpf' and those of Valentine.2 Stumpf held that the pitch of the lower component of a dyad was more dominant than that of the higher component, while Valentine held that it was the pitch of the higher component which was the more dominant. In his earlier paper,3 the writer had attempted to reconcile these conflicting sets of data by showing that while it was highly probable that Stumpf's subjects were musically naive it was definitely known that Valentine's were musically trained. These latter, then, had been trained in melody hunting. This in itself should tend to emphasize the pitch of the upper component of each dyad, or so it seemed to the present writer. In the same paper, data were offered of a clinical sort which appeared to substantiate this theory that one's training may alter one's pitch reactions. The untrained subjects in the experiment reacted in the main as did Stumpf's; those trained in melody hunting as did Valentine's. The writer's clinical data offered in 1923 were assembled from only 10 Ss. As they gave little information concerning the dyad pitch-discrimination of the average person (average in a musical sense) it was thought advisable to conduct similar experiments on a fairly large number of college students. Subjects. The Ss, 276 in number, were drawn at random from classes in psychology. Half (138) were arbitrarily classified as musical, i.e. they had had from 1 to 121/2 years of musical training of some kind (median 2/2 yr.), and half as unmusical, i.e. they had had no musical training or less than a year of training. The Ss, musical and unmusical, served together in groups of 10 to 20. Directions. The following directions were given the Ss.