Play music to 'refine' your hearing system

A new study by Northwestern University scientists has proven that your mother is right when she insists that you continue to practice music, even if your future is not related to music.

The study, which will be published in the April issue of Nature Neuroscience, is the first to provide concrete evidence that playing an instrument can significantly enhance sensitivity. of the brain stem with sounds of words. This discovery is very significant because it can be applied to sound coding skills, skills that not only relate to music but also language.

The findings show that exposure to music from a young age can, in fact, ' fine tune ' the auditory system of the brain. 'Increasing music exposure time seems to be beneficial for all children - at a different level in terms of music or not - in different learning activities,' said Nina Krause, director of Neurological Laboratory. Hearing Learning from Northwestern University and the lead author of this study.

(Photo: Kiddievillage) 'Our findings emphasize the broad impact of music practice on the development of the nervous system. However, music classes are often the first class to be cut when the school budget is tight. That's wrong, ' said Nina Krause, professor of neurophysiology and physiology, professor of communication science and disorder.

'Our research is the first to ask the question, whether reinforcing the sound environment - in this case, by music training - has a positive effect on how an individual Whether it encodes sounds even at a basic level like the brain stem, ' said Patrick Wong, the lead author of the study ' music exposure formed the encryption of the high-low-type human brain stem of the language. ' An old structure from an evolutionary perspective, the brain stem was once thought to play only a passive role in hearing treatment.

Using a novel experimental design, scientists give 20 adults a hearing from China when they're watching TV. Half of these people have at least six years of instrumental training, starting before the age of 12. The rest have less than two years of practice or have not practiced any instrument. All of them are native English speakers and do not know Chinese, a tonal language.

In tonal languages, a single word may be different in meaning, depending on the low altitudes called ' voices '. For example, the Chinese word ' mi ' emanates in a flat voice, meaning ' glancing ', raising your voice, meaning ' embarrassing ' and down your voice and then raising your voice to mean ' rice '. English, on the other hand, uses only the height to reflect intonation (like the voice used in the question).

When the subjects watched television, scientists used electrophysiological (lectrophysiological) methods to measure and graph the accuracy of their ability to detect three ' mi ' high-pitched sounds. different low.

Brain stem (Photo: brainexplorer)

'Even if they are focusing their attention on the movie and although these sounds do not have any meaning to music or language to them, we discover that people who practice music Being able to follow these 3 different voices is much better than those who don't have music training. ' Mr. Wong, director of the Voice Research Laboratory at Northwestern University, is an associate professor of communication and disorder science.

This study offers a new way to define the relationship between the brain stem - a low-level brain structure that has been thought to be irreplaceable and has nothing to do with the complex process - neocortex (neocortex), a high-level brain structure, is linked to music, language and other complex processing.

These findings are closely related to previous studies conducted by Mr. Wong and his team, saying that exposure to music can improve the ability to learn tonal languages ​​at age. Mature and musical exposure levels affect the degree of activation in the auditory region of the brain (auditory cortex).

These findings are also consistent with the studies of Ms. Krause and her team, which have reported differences in the coding of brainstem sounds in some children along with the absence. Learning ability can be improved by auditory training.

'We found that, by playing music - an activity that is supposed to be a function of brain neuralgia -, a person can actually adjust his brain stem,' Kraus said. 'This shows that the relationship between brainstem and neotenum is a reciprocal and dynamic relationship and tells us that our basic sensory circuit system is' easier' than us. think before. "

In general, these findings support a series of answers to new questions. Researchers are noticing how to ' hammer ' the brain so that it encodes sound better - this is a study that has a lot of meaning to educate and treat the disease comprehensively.

This research was funded by Northwestern University, the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

Thanh Van