Musical Training Can Lead to Better Speech Perception
Do you know how to play an instrument, such as a guitar, violin, or piano? Have you ever learned to recognize different notes or melodies in music? If so, you may have better speech perception than those who haven’t. A recent article published by Du et al. shows that musicians have an advantage in noise perception both on a behavioral level and on a neural level. In their behavioral study, they compared both musicians’ and non-musicians’ abilities to identify certain English phonemes alone or when combined with noise. Simultaneously, they used an fMRI to test their BOLD (blood oxygenation level-dependent) activity and ran a comparison between the two groups. Additionally, they looked at certain regions of interests (ROIs) from the fMRI and compared them using a multivoxel pattern analysis to see a difference in activation between regions. They found that long-term musical training helps with speech perception in noisy environments. This performance was correlated to an increase in activity in Broca’s area (a region in the frontal lobe linked to language processing and speech production), higher representations in auditory and motor regions, as well as stronger inter- and intra-hemispherical connectivity between auditory and motor regions. They ultimately found that musical training could lead to better auditory encoding, speech motor prediction, and auditory-motor integration that lead to better speech perception.
This study has quite a number of implications. With increased speech perception, you would be able to understand what someone is saying more quickly. This may benefit students in terms of taking down notes in lectures and comprehending lecture material. Better speech perception also has some clinical implications. Research by Kathleen et al. has shown that aging is related to a decrease in auditory processing. If musical training can increase speech perception, it may also have effects on auditory processing and thus decrease some of the negative symptoms associated with aging. These are all additional factors that need to be further studied, but the implications are very intriguing. Learning music is not only a good skill, but it may also have many beneficial effects. So in your spare time, learn how to play an instrument and differentiate between the sounds – you may be able to gain an upper hand in speech perception.
Writer: Albert Wang
Editor: Sophia Hon
Sources:
Musical training sharpens and bonds ears and tongue to hear speech better
Effects of aging on auditory processing of speech
