Figure 1.

Musicians, auditory attention, and processing speech in noise. We assessed auditory attention, speech-in-noise perception and auditory brainstem function in musicians and non-musicians (Parbery-Clark et al., 2009; Strait et al., 2010). Musicians demonstrated enhanced auditory attention as measured by reaction time (A) and were better able to accurately repeat sentences presented in noise at poorer signal-to-noise ratios than non-musicians (B). Auditory attention performance correlated with speech-in-noise perception across all subjects, with individuals having faster reaction times during a sustained attention task demonstrating better hearing in noise (C). Although both musicians and non-musicians demonstrated robust neural responses to a speech sound when presented in a quiet background, non-musicians’ responses were particularly degraded with the addition of a six-talker babble noise to the background. In both groups, the brainstem response waveform is positively correlated with the acoustic waveform of the stimulus. However, when the stimulus is presented in the presence of background noise musicians’ brainstem responses represent the stimulus more faithfully than non-musicians’ (D). *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01.