PMID- 33790832 OWN - NLM STAT- PubMed-not-MEDLINE LR - 20210402 IS - 1664-1078 (Print) IS - 1664-1078 (Electronic) IS - 1664-1078 (Linking) VI - 12 DP - 2021 TI - Effects of Amateur Musical Experience on Categorical Perception of Lexical Tones by Native Chinese Adults: An ERP Study. PG - 611189 LID - 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.611189 [doi] LID - 611189 AB - Music impacting on speech processing is vividly evidenced in most reports involving professional musicians, while the question of whether the facilitative effects of music are limited to experts or may extend to amateurs remains to be resolved. Previous research has suggested that analogous to language experience, musicianship also modulates lexical tone perception but the influence of amateur musical experience in adulthood is poorly understood. Furthermore, little is known about how acoustic information and phonological information of lexical tones are processed by amateur musicians. This study aimed to provide neural evidence of cortical plasticity by examining categorical perception of lexical tones in Chinese adults with amateur musical experience relative to the non-musician counterparts. Fifteen adult Chinese amateur musicians and an equal number of non-musicians participated in an event-related potential (ERP) experiment. Their mismatch negativities (MMNs) to lexical tones from Mandarin Tone 2-Tone 4 continuum and non-speech tone analogs were measured. It was hypothesized that amateur musicians would exhibit different MMNs to their non-musician counterparts in processing two aspects of information in lexical tones. Results showed that the MMN mean amplitude evoked by within-category deviants was significantly larger for amateur musicians than non-musicians regardless of speech or non-speech condition. This implies the strengthened processing of acoustic information by adult amateur musicians without the need of focused attention, as the detection of subtle acoustic nuances of pitch was measurably improved. In addition, the MMN peak latency elicited by across-category deviants was significantly shorter than that by within-category deviants for both groups, indicative of the earlier processing of phonological information than acoustic information of lexical tones at the pre-attentive stage. The results mentioned above suggest that cortical plasticity can still be induced in adulthood, hence non-musicians should be defined more strictly than before. Besides, the current study enlarges the population demonstrating the beneficial effects of musical experience on perceptual and cognitive functions, namely, the effects of enhanced speech processing from music are not confined to a small group of experts but extend to a large population of amateurs. CI - Copyright (c) 2021 Zhu, Chen and Yang. FAU - Zhu, Jiaqiang AU - Zhu J AD - School of Foreign Languages, Hunan University, Changsha, China. FAU - Chen, Xiaoxiang AU - Chen X AD - School of Foreign Languages, Hunan University, Changsha, China. FAU - Yang, Yuxiao AU - Yang Y AD - Foreign Studies College, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China. LA - eng PT - Journal Article DEP - 20210315 PL - Switzerland TA - Front Psychol JT - Frontiers in psychology JID - 101550902 PMC - PMC8005537 OTO - NOTNLM OT - MMN OT - Mandarin lexical tones OT - amateur musical experience OT - categorical perception OT - cortical plasticity COIS- The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. EDAT- 2021/04/02 06:00 MHDA- 2021/04/02 06:01 PMCR- 2021/03/15 CRDT- 2021/04/01 06:26 PHST- 2020/09/28 00:00 [received] PHST- 2021/02/17 00:00 [accepted] PHST- 2021/04/01 06:26 [entrez] PHST- 2021/04/02 06:00 [pubmed] PHST- 2021/04/02 06:01 [medline] PHST- 2021/03/15 00:00 [pmc-release] AID - 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.611189 [doi] PST - epublish SO - Front Psychol. 2021 Mar 15;12:611189. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.611189. eCollection 2021.