According to studies presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Neuroscience, “musical training can improve your hearing”. Go figure. Don’t worry it gets more interesting.

Studies in the past have determined that musical training does not help a person’s ability to pick out voices in a noisy room. This year, a similar study was conducted: but instead of picking out human voices, the subjects had to pick out their respective instruments. This time around the results were quite different.

Right now you’re thinking, thanks captain obvious. This is probably not surprising news. But it was interesting to some of the country’s top neuroscientists because of it’s implications into how we treat language disabilities in children. Pitch, timing, and tone quality: the three most important aspects of language recognition. Our ability to quickly detect these attributes determine our lingual cognition.

Nina Kraus, director of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University, explains that musicians are excelling where children with language disabilities are falling short. While nothing has been done yet using this theory, it opens up a gateway for experimental treatments of dyslexia and other impairments.

An excellent article from NPR below, please check it out. Credit to author Jon Hamilton.

Say What?! Musicians Hear Better

Posted on October 20th, 2009 at 10:26 pm | Filed under General |