Enhanced speech perception in noise and cortical auditory evoked potentials in professional musicians

Abstract

Objective: The current research investigated whether professional musicians outperformed non-musicians on auditory processing and speech-in-noise perception as assessed using behavioural and electrophysiological tasks. Design: Spectro-temporal processing skills were assessed using a psychoacoustic test battery. Speech-in-noise perception was measured using the Listening in Spatialised Noise – Sentences (LiSN-S) test and Cortical Auditory Evoked Potentials (CAEPs) recorded to the speech syllable/da/presented in quiet and in 8-talker babble noise at 0, 5, and 10 dB signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). Study sample: Ten professional musicians and 10 non-musicians participated in this study. Results: Musicians significantly outperformed non-musicians in the frequency discrimination task and low-cue condition of the LiSN-S test. Musicians’ N1 amplitude showed no difference between 5 dB and 0 dB SNR conditions while non-musicians showed significantly lower N1 amplitude at 0 dB SNR compared to 5 dB SNR. Brain-behaviour correlation for musicians showed a significant association between CAEPs at 5 dB SNR and the low-cue condition of the LiSN-S test at 30–70 ms. Time–frequency analysis indicated musicians had significantly higher alpha power desynchronisation in the 0 dB SNR condition indicating involvement of attention. Conclusions: Through the use of behavioural and electrophysiological data, the results provide converging evidence for improved speech recognition in noise in musicians.

Key Words:

• Musicians
• auditory processing
• speech-in-noise perception
• cortical auditory evoked potentials
• alpha
• theta
• oscillations
• event related spectral perturbations

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the financial support of the HEARing CRC, established under the Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) Programme. The CRC Programme supports industry-led end-user driven research collaborations to address the major challenges facing Australia.

Declaration of interest

None of the authors have potential conflicts of interest to be disclosed.

Note

Supplementary material available online

Notes

1. As described in Cameron and Dillon (2007) the LiSN sentences, similar to the BKB sentences, contain some Stage 2 (e.g. kick ball) and mostly Stage 3 or three-element clauses of subject, verb and object (e.g. daddy kick ball).