Mechanisms of music perception and its changes in hearing impaired people

Abstract

Objective: This review aims to highlight the key elements of music perception and its mechanisms in normal hearing people and people with hearing impairments. Design: A systematic literature search was conducted using the National Library of Medicine's search service – PubMed (website: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez), with the subject headings ‘Music perception’, ‘Hearing impairment’ and ‘Normal hearing people’ or ‘Cochlear implant’ or ‘Hearing aid’. Results: The key evidence available and the mechanisms of poor music perception in hearing impaired people with hearing devices were reviewed, including hearing aid (HA) alone, cochlear implant (CI) alone or bimodal (HA+ CI) stimulation. People with hearing impairment have limited ability to fully utilize fine temporal structure and frequency selectivity, and consequently musical pitch, melody and timbre perception in people with hearing impairment is significantly impaired. Conclusion: The poor ability to accurately perceive music for hearing aids users is mainly due to the damaged cochlea and device distortion, whereas cochlear implant recipients typically have poor music perception because of reduced extraction of temporal and spectral information in music.

Key words::

• cochlear implant
• hearing aids
• hearing impairment
• music perception

Acknowledgements

We thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. We also acknowledge Norma Meechem for her proofreading. This work was partially funded by British Council PMI2 funding.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest.

The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.