The Investigation of Cortical Auditory Evoked Potentials Responses in Young Adults Having Musical Education

Year 2014, Volume: 31 Issue: 4, 328 - 334, 01.10.2014

Zahra Polat Ahmet Ataş

Abstract

Background: In the literature, music education has been shown to
enhance auditory perception for children and young adults. When
compared to young adult non-musicians, young adult musicians
demonstrate increased auditory processing, and enhanced sensitivity
to acoustic changes. The evoked response potentials associated with
the interpretation of sound are enhanced in musicians. Studies show
that training also changes sound perception and cortical responses.
The earlier training appears to lead to larger changes in the auditory
cortex.
Aims: Most cortical studies in the literature have used pure tones
or musical instrument sounds as stimuli signals. The aim of those
studies was to investigate whether musical education would enhance
auditory cortical responses when speech signals were used. In this
study, the speech sounds extracted from running speech were used
as sound stimuli.
Study Design: Non-randomized controlled study.Methods: The experimental group consists of young adults up to 21
years-old, all with a minimum of 4 years of musical education. The
control group was selected from young adults of the same age without
any musical education. The experiments were conducted by using a
cortical evoked potential analyser and /m/, /t/ /g/ sound stimulation at
the level of 65 dB SPL. In this study, P1 / N1 / P2 amplitude and latency
values were measured.
Results: Significant differences were found in the amplitude values
of P1 and P2 (p<0.05). The differences among the latencies were not
found to be significantly important (p>0.05).
Conclusion: The results obtained in our study indicate that musical
experience has an effect on the nervous system and this can be seen in
cortical auditory evoked potentials recorded when the subjects hear
speech

Keywords

Auditory cortex, cortical auditory, evoked potentials, evoked responses, musical training

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