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Cortical and subcortical processing of short duration speech stimuli in trained rock musicians: a pilot study

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Abstract

Most trained musicians are actively involved in rigorous practice from several years to achieve a high level of proficiency. Therefore, musicians are best group to research changes or modification in brain structures and functions across several information processing systems. This study aimed to investigate cortical and subcortical processing of short duration speech stimuli in trained rock musicians and non-musicians. Two groups of participant (experimental and control groups) in the age range of 18–25 years were selected for the study. Experimental group includes 15 rock musicians who had minimum professional training of 5 years of rock music, and each member had to be a regular performer of rock music for at least 15 h a week. Further age-matched 15 participants who were not having any formal training of any music served as non-musicians, in the control group. The speech-evoked ABR (S-ABR) and speech-evoked ALLR (S-LLR) with short duration speech ‘synthetic /da/’ was elicited in both groups. Different measures were analyzed for S-ABR and S-LLR. For S-ABR, MANOVA revealed significant main effect of groups on latencies of wave V, wave A, and amplitude of wave V/A slope. Similarly, Kruskal–Wallis test showed significantly higher F 0 amplitude in rock musicians compared with non-musicians. For S-LLR, MANOVA showed statistically significant differences observed for latencies of wave P2 and N2 and amplitude measures of P2–N2 amplitude. This study indicated better neural processing of short duration speech stimuli at subcortical as well as cortical level among rock musicians when compared with non-musicians.

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Acknowledgments

We want to acknowledge Director of AIISH, Mysuru-6, India and HOD of Department of Audiology, AIISH, Mysuru-6, India for allowing us to carry out this study. We also want to acknowledge all participants of our study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. All India Institute of Speech and Hearing, Mysuru, 570006, Karnataka, India

    Prawin Kumar, Sam Publius Anil, Vibhu Grover & Himanshu Kumar Sanju

  2. Sri Aurbindo Institute of Medical Science, Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India

    Sachchidanand Sinha

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  1. Prawin Kumar
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  2. Sam Publius Anil
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  3. Vibhu Grover
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  4. Himanshu Kumar Sanju
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  5. Sachchidanand Sinha
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Correspondence to Himanshu Kumar Sanju.

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No conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the All India Institute of Speech and Hearing, Mysore-6, research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Kumar, P., Anil, S.P., Grover, V. et al. Cortical and subcortical processing of short duration speech stimuli in trained rock musicians: a pilot study. Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol 274, 1153–1160 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00405-016-4285-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00405-016-4285-x

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