Superior pre-attentive auditory processing in musicians

THE present study focuses on influences of long-term experience on auditory processing, providing the first evidence for pre-attentively superior audi tory processing in musicians. This was revealed by the brain's automatic ch ange-detection response, which is reflected electrically as the mismatch ne gativity (MMN) and generated by the operation of sensoric (echoic) memory, the earliest cognitive memory system. Major chords and single tones were pr esented to both professional violinists and non-musicians under ignore and attend conditions. Slightly impure chords, presented among perfect major ch ords elicited a distinct MMN in professional musicians, but not in non-musi cians. This demonstrates that compared to non-musicians, musicians are supe rior in pre-attentively extracting more information out of musically releva nt stimuli. Since effects of long-term experience on pre-attentive auditory processing have so far been reported for language-specific phonemes only, results indicate that sensory memory mechanisms can be modulated by trainin g on a more general level. (C) 1999 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.