Abstract
Objective: The ability to detect frequency variation is a fundamental skill necessary for speech perception. It is known that musical expertise is associated with a range of auditory perceptual skills, including discriminating frequency change, which suggests the neural encoding of spectral features can be enhanced by musical training. In this study, we measured auditory cortical responses to frequency change in musicians to examine the relationships between N1/P2 responses and behavioral performance/musical training.Methods: Behavioral and electrophysiological data were obtained from professional musicians and age-matched non-musician participants. Behavioral data included frequency discrimination detection thresholds for no threshold-equalizing noise (TEN), +5, 0, and −5 signal-to-noise ratio settings. Auditory-evoked responses were measured using a 64-channel electroencephalogram (EEG) system in response to frequency changes in ongoing pure tones consisting of 250 and 4,000 Hz, and the magnitudes of frequency change were 10%, 25% or 50% from the base frequencies. N1 and P2 amplitudes and latencies as well as dipole source activation in the left and right hemispheres were measured for each condition.Results: Compared to the non-musician group, behavioral thresholds in the musician group were lower for frequency discrimination in quiet conditions only. The scalp-recorded N1 amplitudes were modulated as a function of frequency change. P2 amplitudes in the musician group were larger than in the non-musician group. Dipole source analysis showed that P2 dipole activity to frequency changes was lateralized to the right hemisphere, with greater activity in the musician group regardless of the hemisphere side. Additionally, N1 amplitudes to frequency changes were positively related to behavioral thresholds for frequency discrimination while enhanced P2 amplitudes were associated with a longer duration of musical training.Conclusions: Our results demonstrate that auditory cortical potentials evoked by frequency change are related to behavioral thresholds for frequency discrimination in musicians. Larger P2 amplitudes in musicians compared to non-musicians reflects musical training-induced neural plasticity.
Highlights
Understanding speech and other everyday sounds require the processing of the temporal and spectral information in sounds
We showed that the effect of frequency change was more apparent for N1, while P2 responses are closely related to musical training
An enhanced N1 response to frequency changes is associated with better frequency discrimination whereas P2 responses are positively related to the duration of musician training, indicating traininginduced cortical plasticity
Summary
Understanding speech and other everyday sounds require the processing of the temporal and spectral information in sounds. Pitch perception is the ability to extract the frequency information of a complex stimulus. It relies on spectral cues because it requires the mapping of frequencies onto meaningful speech or music (Stangor and Walinga, 2014). In both speech and music, pitch provides spectral information to facilitate the perception of musical structure and the acquisition of speech understanding inferred from the pitch contour and prosody information (Moore, 2008; Oxenham, 2012). Difficulties with listening in noise have been attributed to the reduced ability to segregate the spectral cues and noise (Gaudrain et al, 2007)
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