Neural correlates of processing structure in music and language - Influences of musical training and language impairment
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Research in second language learning has found correlations between general intelligence, musical ability, and success in learning the second language. The studies reported here concern the extent to which university conservatory students are better at perceiving and producing unfamiliar linguistic tones in Mandarin. In Experiment 1, native speakers of American English with musical training performed significantly better than non-musicians when determining whether a sine-wave tone went up, down, or remained the same in pitch. Musicians also performed significantly better than non-musicians when asked to identify the four distinctive tones of Mandarin (high-level, mid-rising, lowdipping, high-falling), which had analogous shifts in fundamental frequency to those of the sine-wave stimuli. Accuracy on the Mandarin tones for both groups was relatively low since listeners were not trained on the phonemic contrasts. Experiment 2 compared musicians and non-musicians on discrimination and imitation of these unfamiliar tones. Listeners were presented with two different Mandarin words that had either the same or different tones; listeners indicated whether the tones were same or different. All listeners had significantly more difficulty discriminating between mid-rising and low-dipping tones than with other contrasts. Listeners with music conservatory training showed significantly greater accuracy in their discrimination. Likewise, musicians' spoken imitations of Mandarin were rated as significantly more native-like than those of nonmusicians. These findings suggest that musicians may have abilities or training that facilitate their perception and production of Mandarin tones. However, further research is needed to determine whether this advantage transfers to language learning situations.
Mandarin Chinese
Tone (literature)
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Abstract Results of numerous experiments conducted over the past 15 years by using behavioural as well as brain imaging methods have shown that musical expertise influences brain anatomy, brain functions and behaviour. The musician’ brain is thus considered as a very good model of brain plasticity. Moreover, many results have demonstrated that musical expertise not only impacts on music processing but also on several aspects of speech processing including lexical pitch, sentence intonation and the metric structure of words. Conversely, recent results indicated that linguistic expertise with tone or quantity languages such as Mandarin Chinese, Thai, Finnish and Japanese, influences the processing of harmonic tones and musical intervals. We discuss possible interpretations of these findings in terms of common processing of the acoustic parameters involved in music and speech and in terms of bidirectional transfer of training effects between music and speech processing.
Tone (literature)
Intonation
Mandarin Chinese
Sentence processing
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Abstract Music, Language, and Cognition is the third collection of Peter Kivy's seminal papers in the philosophy of music. In essays which span his earliest work in the field and his more recent contributions to journals, anthologies, and conference proceedings, Kivy considers the origin of music, the medium of expression in opera, the role of music in film, the nature of an “ideal” performance, and the question of whether absolute music has a meaning, among other issues. Rich with critical analysis and informed by the history of both philosophy and music, this volume will be of interest to anyone who likes not only to listen to music, but to think about it as well.
Philosophy of music
Music psychology
Expression (computer science)
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Neurophysiology
Music Perception
Music psychology
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Melody
Timbre
Music Perception
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This chapter reviews the evidence for the influence of musical training and musical abilities on different aspects of language processing and executive functions. Music and language produce phenomenologically different experiences and require different abilities. Adult musicians outperformed non-musicians on tests of cognitive flexibility and working memory, but not on tests of inhibitory control. In the cascade interpretation, increased sensitivity to low-level acoustic parameters such as pitch or duration, that are common to music and speech, drives the influence of musical training at different levels of language processing. Whether similar levels of processing in language and music activate similar brain regions, and whether musical expertise influences brain structures considered as speech-specific, are important issues for our understanding of the anatomo-functional organization of the brain. The N400 effect was larger over centro-parietal regions in musicians and more frontally distributed in non-musicians, which was taken as evidence that musicians were more efficient at integrating the meaning of novel words into semantic networks.
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A stroke results in brain damage, often causing loss or reduction in speech and language capacity. Music and music therapy can contribute to the recovery of speech and provide emotional support to individuals with aphasia. There is a diverse body of research on the links between music and language. Musical structure is related to language syntax. Singing songs from one’s culture, the emotional act of singing, the theatrics of singing, and musical improvisation can all influence speech output. The purpose of this article is to review current research on the links between language and music in brain function in order tofurther explore, through case study and analysis of music therapy application, how music might be employed as part of acomprehensive, multimodal approach to speech and language rehabilitation.
Music Therapy
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A bstract : One approach to comparing the neural bases of language and music is through the use of song, which is a unique and ecological combination of these two cognitive domains. In song, language and music are merged into one acoustic signal with two salient dimensions. By manipulating either the linguistic or musical dimensions (or both) of song and studying their relationships, it is possible to gain important information about the neural networks underlying language and music cognition. We will present a brief review followed by recent behavioral, electrophysiological, and neuroimaging studies concerned with the functional and structural relationships of music and language. These results, together with the previous studies in the field, help understanding whether the different levels of music and language processing are independent or interactive.
Music psychology
Music Perception
Music and emotion
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