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Diotic and Dichotic Mechanisms of Discrimination Threshold in Musicians and Non-Musicians

The perception of harmonic complexes provides important information for musical and vocal communication. Numerous studies have shown that musical training and expertise are associated with better processing of harmonic complexes, however, it is unclear whether the perceptual improvement associated w...

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Autores principales: Inabinet, Devin, De La Cruz, Jan, Cha, Justin, Ng, Kevin, Musacchia, Gabriella
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8699398/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34942891
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11121592
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author Inabinet, Devin
De La Cruz, Jan
Cha, Justin
Ng, Kevin
Musacchia, Gabriella
author_facet Inabinet, Devin
De La Cruz, Jan
Cha, Justin
Ng, Kevin
Musacchia, Gabriella
author_sort Inabinet, Devin
collection PubMed
description The perception of harmonic complexes provides important information for musical and vocal communication. Numerous studies have shown that musical training and expertise are associated with better processing of harmonic complexes, however, it is unclear whether the perceptual improvement associated with musical training is universal to different pitch models. The current study addresses this issue by measuring discrimination thresholds of musicians (n = 20) and non-musicians (n = 18) to diotic (same sound to both ears) and dichotic (different sounds to each ear) sounds of four stimulus types: (1) pure sinusoidal tones, PT; (2) four-harmonic complex tones, CT; (3) iterated rippled noise, IRN; and (4) interaurally correlated broadband noise, called the “Huggins” or “dichotic” pitch, DP. Frequency difference limens (DLF) for each stimulus type were obtained via a three-alternative-forced-choice adaptive task requiring selection of the interval with the highest pitch, yielding the smallest perceptible fundamental frequency (F0) distance (in Hz) between two sounds. Music skill was measured by an online test of musical pitch, melody and timing maintained by the International Laboratory for Brain Music and Sound Research. Musicianship, length of music experience and self-evaluation of musical skill were assessed by questionnaire. Results showed musicians had smaller DLFs in all four conditions with the largest group difference in the dichotic condition. DLF thresholds were related to both subjective and objective musical ability. In addition, subjective self-report of musical ability was shown to be a significant variable in group classification. Taken together, the results suggest that music-related plasticity benefits multiple mechanisms of pitch encoding and that self-evaluation of musicality can be reliably associated with objective measures of perception.
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spelling pubmed-86993982021-12-24 Diotic and Dichotic Mechanisms of Discrimination Threshold in Musicians and Non-Musicians Inabinet, Devin De La Cruz, Jan Cha, Justin Ng, Kevin Musacchia, Gabriella Brain Sci Article The perception of harmonic complexes provides important information for musical and vocal communication. Numerous studies have shown that musical training and expertise are associated with better processing of harmonic complexes, however, it is unclear whether the perceptual improvement associated with musical training is universal to different pitch models. The current study addresses this issue by measuring discrimination thresholds of musicians (n = 20) and non-musicians (n = 18) to diotic (same sound to both ears) and dichotic (different sounds to each ear) sounds of four stimulus types: (1) pure sinusoidal tones, PT; (2) four-harmonic complex tones, CT; (3) iterated rippled noise, IRN; and (4) interaurally correlated broadband noise, called the “Huggins” or “dichotic” pitch, DP. Frequency difference limens (DLF) for each stimulus type were obtained via a three-alternative-forced-choice adaptive task requiring selection of the interval with the highest pitch, yielding the smallest perceptible fundamental frequency (F0) distance (in Hz) between two sounds. Music skill was measured by an online test of musical pitch, melody and timing maintained by the International Laboratory for Brain Music and Sound Research. Musicianship, length of music experience and self-evaluation of musical skill were assessed by questionnaire. Results showed musicians had smaller DLFs in all four conditions with the largest group difference in the dichotic condition. DLF thresholds were related to both subjective and objective musical ability. In addition, subjective self-report of musical ability was shown to be a significant variable in group classification. Taken together, the results suggest that music-related plasticity benefits multiple mechanisms of pitch encoding and that self-evaluation of musicality can be reliably associated with objective measures of perception. MDPI 2021-11-30 /pmc/articles/PMC8699398/ /pubmed/34942891 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11121592 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Inabinet, Devin
De La Cruz, Jan
Cha, Justin
Ng, Kevin
Musacchia, Gabriella
Diotic and Dichotic Mechanisms of Discrimination Threshold in Musicians and Non-Musicians
title Diotic and Dichotic Mechanisms of Discrimination Threshold in Musicians and Non-Musicians
title_full Diotic and Dichotic Mechanisms of Discrimination Threshold in Musicians and Non-Musicians
title_fullStr Diotic and Dichotic Mechanisms of Discrimination Threshold in Musicians and Non-Musicians
title_full_unstemmed Diotic and Dichotic Mechanisms of Discrimination Threshold in Musicians and Non-Musicians
title_short Diotic and Dichotic Mechanisms of Discrimination Threshold in Musicians and Non-Musicians
title_sort diotic and dichotic mechanisms of discrimination threshold in musicians and non-musicians
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8699398/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34942891
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11121592
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