Abstract
Despite the overall success of cochlear implantation, language outcomes remain suboptimal and subject to large inter-individual variability. Early auditory rehabilitation techniques have mostly focused on low-level sensory abilities. However, a new body of literature suggests that cognitive operations are critical for auditory perception remediation. We argue in this paper that musical training is a particularly appealing candidate for such therapies, as it involves highly relevant cognitive abilities, such as temporal predictions, hierarchical processing, and auditory-motor interactions. We review recent studies demonstrating that music can enhance both language perception and production at multiple levels, from syllable processing to turn-taking in natural conversation.
Highlights
Before the advent of text messages and email, speech was undoubtedly the most common means of communication
One may wonder which acoustic features are fundamental for speech perception
If speech perception depended upon the specific spectro-temporal features of consonants and vowels, a listener hearing sinusoidal signals should not perceive words
Summary
Before the advent of text messages and email, speech was undoubtedly the most common means of communication. A predictive coding framework minimizing the error between the sensory input and the predicted signal provides an elegant account of how prior knowledge can radically change what we hear This perspective is relevant in the study of the potential benefits of music-making to speech and language abilities. It requires segregating the sound of similar instruments, e.g.; the viola and the violin in a string quartet, which is only possible with an accurate prediction of the spectral content of the music These findings showing a benefit of musical training at different levels of speech and language processing have been underpinned by differences in terms of neural structures and dynamics between musicians and nonmusicians [4]. One valuable intervention study reported the same enhancement after two school terms of weekly musical training, not related to speech-in-noise perception amelioration [45]
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