Musical activities and the development of neural sound discrimination

Musical experience may have the potential to influence functional brain development. The present thesis investigated how the maturation of neural auditory discrimination in childhood varies according to the amount of informal musical activities (e.g., singing and musical play) and formal musical training. Neural auditory discrimination was examined by recording auditory event-related potentials (ERP) to different types of sound changes with electroencephalography (EEG) in children of various ages. The relation of these responses to the amount of informal musical activities was examined in 2 3-year-old children. Furthermore, the development of the responses from early school-age until preadolescence was compared between children receiving formal musical training and musically nontrained children. With regard to typical maturation, the results suggest that neural auditory discrimination is still immature at the age of 2 3 years and continues to develop at least until pre-adolescence. Both informal musical experience and formal musical training were found to modulate various stages of neural auditory discrimination. Specifically, in the 2 3-year-old children, a high amount of informal musical activities was associated with response profiles consistent with enhanced processing of auditory changes and lowered distractibility. Furthermore, during school-age, musically trained children showed more rapid development of neural auditory discrimination than nontrained children especially for music-like sounds. Importantly, no differences were seen between the musically trained and nontrained children at the early stages of the training. Therefore, the group differences that emerged at later ages were most likely due to training and did not reflect pre-existing functional differences between the groups. Thus, the results (i) highlight the usefulness of change-related auditory ERPs as biomarkers for the maturation of auditory processing, (ii) provide novel evidence for the role of informal musical activities in shaping auditory skills in early childhood, and (iii) demonstrate that formal musical training shapes the development of neural auditory discrimination.Musiikillinen toiminta saattaa muokata aivojen kehitystä. Tässä väitöskirjassa tutkittiin, miten arkipäiväiset musiikilliset toiminnot (esim. laulaminen ja tanssiminen) ja ohjattu soittoharrastus heijastuvat äänien hermostollisen erottelun kehitykseen. Erottelukykyjä tarkasteltiin mittaamalla erilaisten äänissä tapahtuvien muutosten synnyttämiä kuuloherätevasteita aivosähkökäyrällä (EEG). Vasteiden yhteyttä arkipäiväisten musiikillisten toimintojen määrään tutkittiin 2-3-vuotiailla lapsilla. Lisäksi vasteiden kehitystä varhaisesta kouluiästä esimurrosikään verrattiin soittamista ja muita asioita harrastavien lasten välillä. Aivojen tyypillisen kehityksen osalta tulokset viittasivat siihen, että äänien hermostollinen erottelu on 2-3-vuoden iässä kypsymätöntä ja kehittyi ainakin esimurrosikään asti. Sekä arkipäiväisten musiikillisten toimintojen että ohjatun soittoharrastuksen havaittiin olevan yhteydessä äänien hermostolliseen erotteluun. Musiikillisesti aktiivisten 2-3-vuotiaiden lasten aivovasteprofiilit viittasivat tehostuneeseen äänissä tapahtuvien muutosten käsittelyyn ja alhaisempaan häiriintyvyyteen. Kouluiässä äänien hermostollinen erottelu kehittyy nopeammin musiikkia harrastavilla lapsilla muihin lapsiin verrattuna. Ryhmien välillä ei havaittu eroja musiikinharjoittelun alkuvaiheessa, mikä viittaa siihen, että myöhemmin esiin tulleet ryhmäerot heijastivat harjoittelun vaikutusta eikä ennen harjoittelua olemassa olleita eroja. Tulokset korostavat herätevasteiden hyödyllisyyttä aivojen kuulokykyjen kehityksen tutkimisessa, tarjoavat uutta tietoa arkipäiväisten musiikillisten toimintojen yhteydestä kuulokykyihin varhaisessa lapsuudessa sekä osoittavat soittoharrastuksen tehostavan äänien hermostollista erottelua

Musical playschool activities are linked to faster auditory development during preschool-age : a longitudinal ERP study

The influence of musical experience on brain development has been mostly studied in school-aged children with formal musical training while little is known about the possible effects of less formal musical activities typical for preschool-aged children (e.g., before the age of seven). In the current study, we investigated whether the amount of musical group activities is reflected in the maturation of neural sound discrimination from toddler to preschool-age. Specifically, we recorded event-related potentials longitudinally (84 recordings from 33 children) in a mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm to different musically relevant sound changes at ages 2-3, 4-5 and 6-7 years from children who attended a musical playschool throughout the follow-up period and children with shorter attendance to the same playschool. In the first group, we found a gradual positive to negative shift in the polarities of the mismatch responses while the latter group showed little evidence of age-related changes in neural sound discrimination. The current study indicates that the maturation of sound encoding indexed by the MMN may be more protracted than once thought and provides first longitudinal evidence that even quite informal musical group activities facilitate the development of neural sound discrimination during early childhood.Peer reviewe

Neural correlates of enhanced executive functions : is less more?

Musical training has been associated with superior performance in various executive function tasks. To date, only a few neuroimaging studies have investigated the neural substrates of the supposed "musician advantage" in executive functions, precluding definite conclusions about its neural basis. Here, we provide a selective review of neuroimaging studies on plasticity and typical maturation of executive functions, with the aim of investigating how proficient performance in executive function tasks is reflected in brain activity. Specifically, we examine the evidence for the hypothesis that enhanced or mature executive functions are manifested as efficient use of neural systems supporting those functions. We also present preliminary results from a functional magnetic resonance imaging study suggesting-in line with this hypothesis-that musically trained adolescents recruit frontoparietal regions less strongly during executive functions tasks than untrained peers.Peer reviewe

Maturation of Speech-Sound ERPs in 5-6-Year-Old Children : A Longitudinal Study

The maturation of 5-6-year-old children's auditory discrimination - indicated by the development of the auditory event-related-potentials (ERPs) - has not been previously studied in longitudinal settings. For the first time, we present here the results based on extensive dataset collected from 75 children. We followed the 5- to 6-year-olds for 20 months and measured their ERPs four times with the same multifeature paradigm with phonemic stimuli. The amplitude of the mismatch negativity (MMN) response increased during this time for vowel, vowel duration and frequency changes. Furthermore, the P3a component started to mature toward adult-like positivity for the vowel, intensity and frequency deviants and the late discriminative negativity (LDN) component decreased with age for vowel and intensity deviants. All the changes in the components seemed to happen during the second follow-up year, when Finnish children are taught letter symbols and other preliminary academic skills before going to school at the age of seven. Therefore, further studies are needed to clarify if these changes in the auditory discrimination are purely age-related or due to increasing linguistic knowledge of the children.Peer reviewe

Auditory profiles of classical, jazz, and rock musicians : Genre-specific sensitivity to musical sound features

When compared with individuals without explicit training in music, adult musicians have facilitated neural functions in several modalities. They also display structural changes in various brain areas, these changes corresponding to the intensity and duration of their musical training. Previous studies have focused on investigating musicians with training in Western classical music. However, musicians involved in different musical genres may display highly differentiated auditory profiles according to the demands set by their genre, i.e., varying importance of different musical sound features. This hypothesis was tested in a novel melody paradigm including deviants in tuning, timbre, rhythm, melody transpositions, and melody contour. Using this paradigm while the participants were watching a silent video and instructed to ignore the sounds, we compared classical, jazz, and rock musicians' and non musicians' accuracy of neural encoding of the melody. In all groups of participants, all deviants elicited an MMN response, which is a cortical index of deviance discrimination. The strength of the MMN and the subsequent attentional P3a responses reflected the importance of various sound features in each music genre: these automatic brain responses were selectively enhanced to deviants in tuning (classical musicians), timing (classical and jazz musicians), transposition (jazz musicians), and melody contour (jazz and rock musicians). Taken together, these results indicate that musicians with different training history have highly specialized cortical reactivity to sounds which violate the neural template for melody content.Peer reviewe

Social pleasures of music

Humans across all societies engage in music-listening and making, which they find pleasurable, despite music does not appear to have any obvious survival value. Here we review the recent studies on the social dimensions of music that contribute to music-induced hedonia. Meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies shows that listening to both positively and negatively valenced music elicit largely similar activation patterns. Activation patterns found during processing of social signals and music are also remarkably similar. These similarities may reflect the inherent sociability of music, and the fact that musical pleasures are consistently associated with autobiographical events linked with musical pieces. Brain’s mu-opioid receptor (OR) system governing social bonding also modulates musical pleasures, and listening to and making of music increase prosociality and OR activity. Finally, real or simulated interpersonal synchrony signals affiliation, and accordingly music-induced movements increase social closeness and pleasant feelings. We conclude that these links between music and interpersonal affiliation are an important mechanism that makes music so rewarding.</p

Maturation of Speech-Sound ERPs in 5–6-Year-Old Children: A Longitudinal Study

The maturation of 5–6-year-old children’s auditory discrimination – indicated by the development of the auditory event-related-potentials (ERPs) – has not been previously studied in longitudinal settings. For the first time, we present here the results based on extensive dataset collected from 75 children. We followed the 5- to 6-year-olds for 20 months and measured their ERPs four times with the same multifeature paradigm with phonemic stimuli. The amplitude of the mismatch negativity (MMN) response increased during this time for vowel, vowel duration and frequency changes. Furthermore, the P3a component started to mature toward adult-like positivity for the vowel, intensity and frequency deviants and the late discriminative negativity (LDN) component decreased with age for vowel and intensity deviants. All the changes in the components seemed to happen during the second follow-up year, when Finnish children are taught letter symbols and other preliminary academic skills before going to school at the age of seven. Therefore, further studies are needed to clarify if these changes in the auditory discrimination are purely age-related or due to increasing linguistic knowledge of the children

Maturation of Speech-Sound ERPs in 5-6-Year-Old Children: A Longitudinal Study

The maturation of 5-6-year-old children's auditory discrimination - indicated by the development of the auditory event-related-potentials (ERPs) - has not been previously studied in longitudinal settings. For the first time, we present here the results based on extensive dataset collected from 75 children. We followed the 5- to 6-year-olds for 20 months and measured their ERPs four times with the same multifeature paradigm with phonemic stimuli. The amplitude of the mismatch negativity (MMN) response increased during this time for vowel, vowel duration and frequency changes. Furthermore, the P3a component started to mature toward adult-like positivity for the vowel, intensity and frequency deviants and the late discriminative negativity (LDN) component decreased with age for vowel and intensity deviants. All the changes in the components seemed to happen during the second follow-up year, when Finnish children are taught letter symbols and other preliminary academic skills before going to school at the age of seven. Therefore, further studies are needed to clarify if these changes in the auditory discrimination are purely age-related or due to increasing linguistic knowledge of the children

MUSICAL EXPERTISE FACILITATES DISSONANCE DETECTION ON BEHAVIORAL, NOT ON EARLY SENSORY LEVEL

CONSONANCE AND DISSONANCE ARE BASIC phenomena in the perception of chords that can be discriminated very early in sensory processing. Musical expertise has been shown to facilitate neural processing of various musical stimuli, but it is unclear whether this applies to detecting consonance and dissonance. Our study aimed to determine if sensitivity to increasing levels of dissonance differs between musicians and nonmusicians, using a combination of neural (electroencephalographic mismatch negativity, MMN) and behavioral measurements (conscious discrimination). Furthermore, we wanted to see if focusing attention to the sounds modulated the neural processing. We used chords comprised of either highly consonant or highly dissonant intervals and further manipulated the degree of dissonance to create two levels of dissonant chords. Both groups discriminated dissonant chords from consonant ones neurally and behaviorally. The magnitude of the MMN differed only marginally between the more dissonant and the less dissonant chords. The musicians outperformed the nonmusicians in the behavioral task. As the dissonant chords elicited MMN responses for both groups, sensory dissonance seems to be discriminated in an early sensory level, irrespective of musical expertise, and the facilitating effects of musicianship for this discrimination may arise in later stages of auditory processing, appearing only in the behavioral auditory task.Peer reviewe

Faster maturation of selective attention in musically trained children and adolescents: Converging behavioral and event-related potential evidence

Previous work suggests that musical training in childhood is associated with enhanced executive functions. However, it is unknown whether this advantage extends to selective attention-another central aspect of executive control. We recorded a well-established event-related potential (ERP) marker of distraction, the P3a, during an audio-visual task to investigate the maturation of selective attention in musically trained children and adolescents aged 10-17 years and a control group of untrained peers. The task required categorization of visual stimuli, while a sequence of standard sounds and distracting novel sounds were presented in the background. The music group outperformed the control group in the categorization task and the younger children in the music group showed a smaller P3a to the distracting novel sounds than their peers in the control group. Also, a negative response elicited by the novel sounds in the N1/MMN time range (similar to 150-200 ms) was smaller in the music group. These results indicate that the music group was less easily distracted by the task-irrelevant sound stimulation and gated the neural processing of the novel sounds more efficiently than the control group. Furthermore, we replicated our previous finding that, relative to the control group, the musically trained children and adolescents performed faster in standardized tests for inhibition and set shifting. These results provide novel converging behavioral and electrophysiological evidence from a cross-modal paradigm for accelerated maturation of selective attention in musically trained children and adolescents and corroborate the association between musical training and enhanced inhibition and set shifting