Cortical pitch representations of complex tones in musicians and non-musicians

Federica Bianchi, Jens Hjortkjær, Sébastien Santurette, Hartwig Siebner, Robert Zatorre, Torsten Dau

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    Abstract

    Musicians have been shown to have an enhanced pitch-discrimination ability compared to non-musicians for complex tones with either resolved or unresolved harmonics [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. It is unclear whether this perceptual enhancement can be ascribed to an enhanced neural representation of pitch at central stages of the auditory system. The aim of this study was to clarify whether (i) cortical responses increase with harmonic resolvability, as suggested in previous studies [6, 7], and whether musicians show (ii) differential neural activation in response to complex tones as compared to non-musicians and/or (iii) a finer fundamental frequency (F0) representation in the auditory cortex. Assuming that the right auditory cortex is specialized in processing fine spectral changes, we hypothesized that an enhanced F0 representation in musicians would be associated with a stronger right-lateralized response to complex tones compared to non-musicians.
    Original languageEnglish
    Publication date2015
    Number of pages1
    Publication statusPublished - 2015
    Event39th Midwinter Meeting of the Association of Research in Otolaryngology - San Diego, United States
    Duration: 20 Feb 201624 Feb 2016

    Conference

    Conference39th Midwinter Meeting of the Association of Research in Otolaryngology
    Country/TerritoryUnited States
    CitySan Diego
    Period20/02/201624/02/2016

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