Music Listening, Music Therapy, Phenomenology and Neuroscience

Appendix 3.03 Survey of The Neurosciences

and Music III Conference 2008

Disorders and Plasticity

Title, Category

Aim

Mus. Material, Cultural Ref.

Technology & Procedure

Main focus

of interest

Conclusion

24S

. Hyde et al.

(182

-186)

Music and structural brain development

Cat. 9: Child development

Cat. 10: Training

25S

. Marin

(187

-190)

Musical training and syntax development

Cat. 6: Language

Cat. 10: Training

26S

. Moreau et al.

(191

-194)

Mismatch negativity in congenital amusia

Cat. 1: Pitch

Cat. 11: Deficit 27S

. Rochette & Bigand
(195

-198)

Auditory training in severely deaf children

Cat. 10: Training

Cat. 11: Deficit

To demonstrate structural brain changes in relati

on to

behavioral changes in children who received 15 months of instrumental training

To investigate cildren’s knowledge of western harmony, and the relationship between musical training and language abilities

Using Mismatch Negativity (MMN) to investigate pre

• 
  

attentive pitch change detection in amusics

To evaluate a training program that includes numerous nonliguistic stimuli that tap into several means of cognitive processing

Task material:

For behavioral tests: 4

-finger

motor sequencing test, and

a

”Melodic and Rhythmic Discrimination Test Battery”

assessing music listening and discrimination skills

CR: Western Piano or trumpet timbre. Priming paradigm: 3 chords, a target chord preceded by priming: IV

-V or no

-priming:

bVI

-bIII chords. CR: Weste

rn

Tones synthesized in piano timbre. Standard tone 1047 Hz (C6), deviant tones 25 cents or 200 cents higher or

lower in pitch

CR: Neutral 4 categories of auditory stimuli: environmental sounds, music, voices, and abstract sounds

CR: Western

MRI scanni

ng followed by

automated Deformation

• 
  

Based Morphometry (DBM) analyses. 15 6

-year children

receiving keyboard instruction for 15 months, 16 controls

31 German-

speaking children

,

mean age 4 years 11 months.

13 attended an early musical training course

.

36 trials

of paradigm

MMN: 10 amusic adults, 8 matched controls. Instruction: Ignore auditory stimulation while watching a silent movie with sub

title

s

4 profound and 2 severely deaf children

, mean age 9 y,

interacted

with games on a

sounding platform. After 20 weeks of training, four tasks:

identification, discrimination, Auditory Scene Analysis (ASA), memory

Training-

induced brain

plasticity Dependent variables: Response time and accuracy

MMN Event-

related potential

(ERP) components elicited by pitch changes corresponding to an eighth of a tone

Accuracy and processing times for tasks. Comparison of test 1 before training, test 2 just after training, and test 3 6 months later

Instrumental children showed areas of greater voxel size change in motor brain areas. Also differences in other brain regions

Preschoolers possess implicit knowledge of Western harmony regardless of early musical training. Children with musical training showed enhanced language abilities

No significant difference between

amusics and

controls. The amusic brain can process small pitch changes at a pre

-attentive

level of processing

Children gained benefits of auditory training over a rather short period. Auditory training had a positive side effect on a phonetic discrimination test, for which there was no training