Article,
Effects of asymmetric cultural experiences on the auditory pathway: evidence from music
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, (July 2009)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04548.x
Abstract
Cultural experiences come in many different forms, such as immersion
in a particular linguistic community, exposure to faces of people
with different racial backgrounds, or repeated encounters with music
of a particular tradition. In most circumstances, these cultural
experiences are asymmetric, meaning one type of experience occurs
more frequently than other types (e.g., a person raised in India
will likely encounter the Indian todi scale more so than a Westerner).
In this paper, we will discuss recent findings from our laboratories
that reveal the impact of short- and long-term asymmetric musical
experiences on how the nervous system responds to complex sounds.
We will discuss experiments examining how musical experience may
facilitate the learning of a tone language, how musicians develop
neural circuitries that are sensitive to musical melodies played
on their instrument of expertise, and how even everyday listeners
who have little formal training are particularly sensitive to music
of their own culture(s). An understanding of these cultural asymmetries
is useful in formulating a more comprehensive model of auditory perceptual
expertise that considers how experiences shape auditory skill levels.
Such a model has the potential to aid in the development of rehabilitation
programs for the efficacious treatment of neurologic impairments.
Tags
- adult,auditory
- characteristics,humans,language,m1,magnetic
- imaging,music,language,music,neuro,perception
- pathways,auditory
- pathways:
- physiology,cognition,cognition:
- physiology,cultural
- resonance
