Article

This study aimed to assess the effect of musical training in statistical learning
of tone sequences using Magnetoencephalography (MEG). Specifically, MEG
recordings were used to investigate the neural and functional correlates of the
pre-attentive ability for detection of deviance, from a statistically learned
tone sequence. The effect of long-term musical training in this ability is
investigated by means of comparison of MMN in musicians to non-musicians. Both
groups (musicians and non-musicians) showed a mismatch negativity (MMN) response
to the deviants and this response did not differ amongst them neither in
amplitude nor in latency. Another interesting finding of this study is that both
groups revealed a significant difference between the standards and the deviants
in the response of P50 and this difference was significantly larger in the group
of musicians. The increase of this difference in the group of musicians underlies
that intensive, specialized and long term exercise can enhance the ability of the
auditory cortex to discriminate new auditory events from previously learned ones
according to transitional probabilities. A behavioral discrimination task between
the standard and the deviant sequences followed the MEG measurement. The
behavioral results indicated that the detection of deviance was not explicitly
learned by either group, probably due to the lack of attentional resources. These
findings provide valuable insights on the functional architecture of statistical
learning.
CI - Copyright (c) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Langue : ANGLAIS