Implications of musical practice in central auditory processing: a systematic review

INTRODUCTION: Recent studies have shown that musical practice and training are effective and have the potential to assist in the acquisition and improvement of auditory skills. OBJECTIVE: To verify the scientific evidence on the implications of musical practice in central auditory processing. METHODS: A systematic review was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA), using the Medline (Pubmed), LILACS, SciELO, BIREME, Scopus and Web of Science databases. The search period for the articles covered the last 5 years (2015–2020), without restriction of language and location. The quality of the articles was assessed, and the review included articles with a minimum score of 6 in a modified literature quality scale. RESULTS: Initially, 1362 publications were found, of which 1338 were excluded after the title screening, 15 were excluded due to the abstract, with nine articles being analyzed in full and four of them excluded after the analysis, as they did not answer the guiding question proposed for this research. Five articles that met the proposed inclusion criteria were admitted for this research. It was found that in adults, musical ability is associated with better performance of several auditory processing skills, as well as the fact that musical training in children promoted an accelerated maturity of auditory processing and exposure to music facilitated the learning of auditory information in newborns. CONCLUSION: Considering the scientific evidence, it was found that the musical experience can improve specific skills of the central auditory processing, regardless of age, optimizing children’s linguistic development.