Influence of Musical Proficiency on Psychophysical Tuning Curves and Contralateral Suppression of DPOAEs

Abstract

Musicians have enhanced pitch and timber discrimination, which helps to extract speech cues in adverse listening situations. It could be hypothesised that musical experience increases cochlear tuning leading to enhanced spectral sensitivity in musicians. Psychophysical tuning curves (PTCs) could be used to behaviorally estimate the sharpness of auditory filters. Hence, the current study aimed at investigating the effect of musical proficiency on PTCs and on contralateral suppression of otoacoustic emissions (OAEs). Thirty participants were divided into three equal groups based on their musical proficiency. PTCs were obtained using forward masking and simultaneous masking paradigm at 1 kHz and 4 kHz; and contralateral suppression of DPOAEs was carried out using white noise at 50 dB SL. The results revealed, that the estimates of tuning curves were significantly sharper in senior musicians compared to junior musicians and non-musicians, significantly sharper tuning curves were obtained under forward masking condition for all the participant. The tuning curves obtained at 4 kHz was significantly sharper compared that obtained at 1 kHz, significantly greater amount of suppression of DPOAEs were noted in senior musicians. Results of the present study indicate that musical training strengthens the activity of medial olivocochlear bundles, which is reflected by increase in sharpness of auditory filters and greater suppression of OAEs. Increased filter sharpness indicates greater resolution of filters at peripheral level which could account for superior performance shown by musicians across various tasks in spectral domain.