Musicians do not demonstrate long-believed advantage in processing sound, large-scale study finds

Musicians do not demonstrate long-believed advantage in processing sound, large-scale study finds

A large-scale study from the University of Michigan and University of Minnesota finds no evidence for a long-believed association between musical training and enhanced neural processing of sounds at the early stages of auditory processing.

Musicians Show No Edge in Early Brain Sound Processing

A large-scale study challenges the long-held belief that musical training boosts the brain’s earliest stages of sound processing. Using a sample size over four times larger than earlier studies, researchers found no difference between musicians and non-musicians in subcortical auditory responses or in recognizing speech amid background noise.