Figure A1.

Musicians (n = 10) outperform nonmusicians (n = 10) on psychoacoustic tasks. A: participants’ pure tone frequency discrimination thresholds were measured using a 1-up 3-down adaptive two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) task, in which participants indicated which of two pairs of tones were different in frequency. Note that lower thresholds correspond to better performance. B: sensorimotor synchronization abilities were measured by instructing participants to tap along with an isochronous beat at various tempos and comparing the standard deviation of the difference between participants’ response onsets and the actual stimulus onsets. C: melody discrimination was measured using a 2AFC task, in which participants heard two five-note melodies (with the second one transposed up by a tritone) and were asked to judge whether the two melodies were the same or different. D: we measured participants’ ability to determine whether a melody conforms to the rules of Western music theory by creating 16-note melodies using a probabilistic generative model of Western tonal melodies (112) and instructing participants to determine whether or not the melody contained an out-of-key (“sour”) note. Colored dots represent individual participants, and the median for each participant group is indicated by the horizontal black line. Mus., musicians; Non-Mus., nonmusicians. *Significant at P < 0.01 one-tailed, **Significant at P < 0.001 one-tailed.