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

28S

. Ross & Marks
(199

-204)

Absolute

pitch in children

Cat. 1: PItch Cat. 9: Child development

29S

. Schlaug et al.
(205

-208)

Training-

induced

neuroplasticity in young children

Cat. 9: Child development

Cat. 10: Training

*30S

. Strait et al.

(209

-213)

Musical experience and neural efficiency

Cat. 6: Infant sound

Cat. 8: Musicians

Cat. 19: Emotion

To test for Absolute Pitch (AP) in children with minimal musical experience

To investigate whether instrumental musical training would alter the development of interhemispheric connections through the corpus callosum (CC)

To understand how musical experience influences subcortical processing of emotionally salient sounds

1) For note naming: 30 sinus

tones and 30 piano tones from the range of C2

-C7.

For nonmusical AP test:

2a) A

sinus

tone followed by a

silent interval. 2b) A

sinus

tone followed by randomly generated interfering tones

CR: Neutral Private instrumental lessons

CR: Western

An emotionally charged complex vocal

sound

• an

infant’s unhappy cry

CR: Neutra

l

2 children, aged 5 years, supposed to have AP. 15 control children, age 5

-15 y.

Tasks: 1) Name notes. 2) Reproduce the target tone by adjusting the knob of a digital sine function generator.

Repeat testing of the two AP children after 5 years

MRI scann

ing before and

after 30 months of instrumental training.

31 children, mean age 6,5 y. 18 attending music lessons:

11 piano, 7 string instruments.

13 controls: no training

Recording of Auditory Brainstem Response (ABR).

30 adults, ages 19

-35 years.

Groups:

15 musicians

with

more than 10 year

s of

consisten

t musical training.

A

subgroup: 11 musicians who began musical training before 7 years of age.

15

Nonmusicians

Hypothesis: The salient identifying feature of AP is the ability to encode durable representations of the chroma of periodic stimuli

Four areas of CC that could plausibly be affected by musical training since they contain fibers projecting to sensory and motor cortical regions

The effect of musical experience, probably a sharpening of subcortical auditory processing, resulting in fine neural tuning to acoustic features important for vocal communication

Data suggest that while the ability to

name

notes is

dependent on learned associations, AP can be a result of the ability to

encode

meaningful representations of chroma independent of experience

Early, intensive, and prolonged skill lear

ning

leads to significant struct

ural changes in the

anterior midbody of the CC, which connects premotor and supplementary motor areas of the two hemispheres

Musical training engenders subcortical efficiency that is connected with acoustic features integral to the communication of emotion