Linguistic

Musical experience shapes human brainstem encoding of linguistic pitch patterns

Music and speech are very cognitively demanding auditory phenomena generally attributed to cortical rather than subcortical circuitry. We examined brainstem encoding of linguistic pitch and found that musicians show more robust and faithful encoding compared with nonmusicians. These results not only implicate a common subcortical manifestation for two presumed cortical functions, but also a possible reciprocity of corticofugal speech and music tuning, providing neurophysiological explanations for musicians' higher language-learning ability.

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1. The Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, 2240 Campus Drive, Evanston, Illinois 60208-3540, USA.
2. Northwestern University Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program, Northwestern University, 2240 Campus Drive, Evanston, Illinois 60208-3540, USA.
3. Department of Neurobiology and Physiology, Northwestern University, 2240 Campus Drive, Evanston, Illinois 60208-3540, USA.
4. Department of Otolaryngology, Northwestern University, 2240 Campus Drive, Evanston, Illinois 60208-3540, USA.
5. These authors contributed equally to this work