Article,
Cross-domain effects of music and language experience on the representation of pitch in the human auditory brainstem
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, (2009)
DOI: 10.1162/jocn.2009.21362
Abstract
Abstract Neural encoding of pitch in the auditory brainstem is known
to be shaped by long-term experience with language or music, implying
that early sensory processing is subject to experience-dependent
neural plasticity. In language, pitch patterns consist of sequences
of continuous, curvilinear contours; in music, pitch patterns consist
of relatively discrete, stair-stepped sequences of notes. The primary
aim was to determine the influence of domain-specific experience
(language vs. music) on the encoding of pitch in the brainstem. Frequency-following
responses were recorded from the brainstem in native Chinese, English
amateur musicians, and English nonmusicians in response to iterated
rippled noise homologues of a musical pitch interval (major third;
M3) and a lexical tone (Mandarin tone 2; T2) from the music and language
domains, respectively. Pitch-tracking accuracy (whole contour) and
pitch strength (50 msec sections) were computed from the brainstem
responses using autocorrelation algorithms. Pitch-tracking accuracy
was higher in the Chinese and musicians than in the nonmusicians
across domains. Pitch strength was more robust across sections in
musicians than in nonmusicians regardless of domain. In contrast,
the Chinese showed larger pitch strength, relative to nonmusicians,
only in those sections of T2 with rapid changes in pitch. Interestingly,
musicians exhibited greater pitch strength than the Chinese in one
section of M3, corresponding to the onset of the second musical note,
and two sections within T2, corresponding to a note along the diatonic
musical scale. We infer that experience-dependent plasticity of brainstem
responses is shaped by the relative saliency of acoustic dimensions
underlying the pitch patterns associated with a particular domain.
