Specialization of the Specialized: Electrophysiological Investigations in Professional Musicians

Thomas F. Münte*, Wido Nager, Tilla Beiss, Christine Schroeder, Eckart Altenmüller

*Corresponding author for this work
    41 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Several event-related brain potential (ERP) studies examining the processing of auditory stimuli by professional musicians compared with non-musicians are reviewed. In the first study, musicians (string players) and non-musicians attended to one of two streams of auditory stimuli characterized by a specific pitch. Musicians showed a prolonged ERP attention effect, the late portion of which was more frontally distributed than was that of the non-musicians. In the second study, we investigated auditory spatial processing in conductors, pianists, and nonmusicians. Only the conductors showed behavioral selectivity of sound sources located in the peripheral auditory space. In addition, this group showed a negative/positive mismatch response for deviant stimuli occurring outside the focus of spatial attention. Finally, a group of drummers was compared to woodwind players and nonmusicians in a passive listening task. A real continuous drum sequence was manipulated so that some beats were anticipated by 80 ms. The drummers showed a mismatch response not only for the anticipated beats but also for the subsequent beats, suggesting a more complex representation of the temporal aspects stimulus sequence in this subject group. Together, these studies suggest qualitative differences of the neural correlates of auditory processing between musicians and non-musicians. Moreover, these differences appear to be shaped by the specific training of a musician.

    Original languageEnglish
    JournalAnnals of the New York Academy of Sciences
    Volume999
    Pages (from-to)131-139
    Number of pages9
    ISSN0077-8923
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 01.01.2003

    Research Areas and Centers

    • Academic Focus: Center for Brain, Behavior and Metabolism (CBBM)

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