Differential advantages of musical backgrounds on binaural integration and interaction skills in instrumentalists,vocalists,and non-musicians

Background:Musical perception requires a host of skills.Instrumental musicians place greater emphasis on motor coordination,whereas vocal musicians rehearse vocal sounds.The study explored the differential advantages of musical background on binaural integration and interaction in musicians(instrumentalists,vocalists)and compared them with age-matched non-musicians.Methods:Eight six participants aged 20e40 y with normal hearing sensitivity were subjected to binaural tests using a standard group comparison research design.The participants were segregated into three groups e Group 1 included instrumentalists(n?26,mean age:17.73±2.83 y),while Group 2 and Group 3 consisted of vocalists(n?30,mean age:19.30±2.47 y)and non-musicians(n?30,mean age:18.20±3.02 y)respectively.The binaural processes namely integration(Dichotic syllable test,DST;and virtual acoustic space identification-VASI)and interaction(Interaural difference thresholds for time and level:ITD&ILD),were administered on all the participants.Results:Statistical analyses showed the main effect of musicianship.Bonferroni pair-wise test revealed that the musicians(instrumentalists and vocalists)outperformed(p<0.05)non-musicians in all the tests.The differential advantage of the musical background was seen on the binaural integration test with instrumentalists performing better in the VASI test compared to vocalists,and vice-versa for DST.No difference was observed in interaction tasks(ITD&ILD)between vocalists and instrumentalists(p>0.05).Conclusion:Musical background-induced differential advantages can be reasonably noted in the binaural skills of instrumentalists and vocalists(compared to non-musicians).

Binaural masking level difference for pure tone signals

The binaural masking level difference(BMLD)is a psychoacoustic method to determine binaural interaction and central auditory processes.The BMLD is the difference in hearing thresholds in homophasic and antiphasic conditions.The duration,phase and frequency of the stimuli can affect the BMLD.The main aim of the study is to evaluate the BMLD for stimuli of different durations and frequencies which could also be used in future electrophysiological studies.To this end we developed a GUI to present different frequency signals of variable duration and determine the BMLD.Three different durations and five different frequencies are explored.The results of the study confirm that the hearing threshold for the antiphasic condition is lower than the hearing threshold for the homophasic condition and that differences are significant for signals of 18ms and 48ms duration.Future objective binaural processing studies will be based on 18ms and 48ms stimuli with the same frequencies as used in the current study.