Thaindian News

Washington, Feb 23 (IANS) Playing musical instruments helps youngsters process speech more accurately in noisy classrooms and interpret nuances of language that are conveyed by subtle changes in the human voice, says a new study.
The study, led by Nina Kraus, professor of neurobiology, physiology and communication sciences at Northwestern University, suggested that education through music can be an effective strategy in helping kids, especially those with autism, develop more accurately encoded speech.

“People’s hearing systems are fine-tuned by the experiences they’ve had with sound throughout their lives,” says Kraus.

“Music training is not only beneficial for processing music stimuli. We’ve found that years of music training may also improve how sounds are processed for language and emotion.”

Researchers in the Kraus lab provided the first concrete evidence that playing a musical instrument significantly enhances the brainstem’s sensitivity to speech sounds.

The findings are consistent with other studies they have conducted revealing that anomalies in brainstem sound encoding in some learning-disabled children can be reduced with auditory training.

The Kraus lab has a unique approach for demonstrating how the nervous system responds to the acoustic properties of speech and music sounds with sub-millisecond precision.

“Individuals with music training show a selective fine-tuning of relevant aspects of auditory signals,” says Kraus, according to a Northwestern University release.

“Playing music engages the ability to extract relevant patterns, such as the sound of one’s own instrument, harmonies and rhythms, from the soundscape.

“Not surprisingly, musicians’ nervous systems are more effective at utilising the patterns in music and speech alike.”

Kraus presented these findings recently at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.