Musical experience shapes human brainstem encoding of linguistic pitch patterns
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- 11 March 2007
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Springer Nature in Nature Neuroscience
- Vol. 10 (4) , 420-422
- https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1872
Abstract
Music and speech are very cognitively demanding auditory phenomena generally attributed to cortical rather than subcortical circuitry. We examined brainstem encoding of linguistic pitch and found that musicians show more robust and faithful encoding compared with nonmusicians. These results not only implicate a common subcortical manifestation for two presumed cortical functions, but also a possible reciprocity of corticofugal speech and music tuning, providing neurophysiological explanations for musicians' higher language-learning ability.Keywords
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