Dr Stefan Elmer | The multifaceted influence of music training on speech processing and word learning

Until now, numerous studies have documented beneficial effects of music training on several aspects of speech processing (i.e., voice-onset time, duration, pitch, timbre, rhythm, and prosody) that go hand-in-hand with functional and structural changes in the auditory-related cortex. However, this perspective is oversimplified in that it does not take into account neural networks, oscillatory dynamics, and higher cognitive functions. In my talk, I will extend this perspective to more complex relationships between music training and speech processing by focusing on the categorization of consonant-vowel syllables, short-term phonetic discrimination learning, speech segmentation, and word learning. In particular, by using multimodal imaging methods (i.e., fMRI, sMRI, DTI, EEG), I will address (1) the nesting relations between functional and structural connectivity and auditory-related cortex activity, (2) the contribution of mnemonic functions to short-term phonetic discrimination learning, (3) the intertwining between functional connectivity in the dorsal stream and word segmentation, and (4) the relationships between music training and word learning.

Poster