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The Journal of Neuroscience, May 6, 2009, 29(18):5832-5840; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.6133-08.2009

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Selective Subcortical Enhancement of Musical Intervals in Musicians

Kyung Myun Lee,^1,2 Erika Skoe,^2,3 Nina Kraus,^2,3,4,5 and Richard Ashley^1,6

¹Bienen School of Music, ²Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, and Departments of ³Communication Sciences, ⁴Neurobiology and Physiology, ⁵Otolaryngology, and ⁶Cognitive Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Nina Kraus, Northwestern University, 2240 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208-2952. Email: nkraus{at}northwestern.edu

By measuring the auditory brainstem response to two musical intervals, the major sixth (E3 and G2) and the minor seventh (E3 and F#2), we found that musicians have a more specialized sensory system for processing behaviorally relevant aspects of sound. Musicians had heightened responses to the harmonics of the upper tone (E), as well as certain combination tones (sum tones) generated by nonlinear processing in the auditory system. In music, the upper note is typically carried by the upper voice, and the enhancement of the upper tone likely reflects musicians' extensive experience attending to the upper voice. Neural phase locking to the temporal periodicity of the amplitude-modulated envelope, which underlies the perception of musical harmony, was also more precise in musicians than nonmusicians. Neural enhancements were strongly correlated with years of musical training, and our findings, therefore, underscore the role that long-term experience with music plays in shaping auditory sensory encoding.

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Received Dec. 23, 2008; revised Feb. 17, 2009; accepted Feb. 24, 2009.

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Nina Kraus, Northwestern University, 2240 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208-2952. Email: nkraus{at}northwestern.edu

This article has been cited by other articles:

				A. Parbery-Clark, E. Skoe, and N. Kraus Musical Experience Limits the Degradative Effects of Background Noise on the Neural Processing of Sound J. Neurosci., November 11, 2009; 29(45): 14100 - 14107. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				G. M. Bidelman and A. Krishnan Neural Correlates of Consonance, Dissonance, and the Hierarchy of Musical Pitch in the Human Brainstem J. Neurosci., October 21, 2009; 29(42): 13165 - 13171. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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