Effects of musical rhythm training on infants’ neural processing of temporal information in music and speech

Abstract

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.]