Musicians Distinguish Sounds Better than Other People

Scientists at the Northwestern University have recently released the conclusion of a new study, showing that music lessons may help those people seeking to be able to distinguish sounds better in loud situations. The investigation comes on the heels of a previous one, which demonstrated that people who played, or had played, a musical instrument were more able to pick up emotional cues from a conversation, regardless of the settings. The team was led by expert Nina Kraus.

For the new research, the scientist followed the brain activity of volunteers using an observation technique known as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). Patterns inside the participants' brains revealed that those among them that had taken music lessons or had played an instrument were a lot better than the rest at making out the sounds they needed to, out of an ocean of others. The first stage of the test consisted of a scientist saying a sentence in a loud setting, and then having the participants repeat it, to see if they picked it up correctly.

The second stage consisted of fitting electrodes on the heads of 15 non-musicians and 16 life-long instrument players, and then making them listen to speech uttered in either a silent or a noisy environment. In both groups, the second type of background delayed their response, but the delay was considerably shorter in all of the musicians' brains, the Northwestern team reports. Additionally, Kraus says, the readings collected from the musicians showed brain waves that were more in tune with the sound waves of the speech than in participants in the second group.

“Music education is not just about teaching your child how to play the flute, it's about teaching your child to function better in our noisy auditory environment. Musicians spend a lot of time extracting particular sounds from a soundscape,” Kraus says, quoted by NewScientist. She adds that a bit of musical training could have positive effects on children suffering from language difficulties, or from autism, as it may accustom their brains to listening for specific patterns among countless others.