Musicians experience less age-related decline in central auditory processing.

TLDR

Age‑related decline in auditory perception stems from peripheral and central changes that reduce the ability to detect fine spectral and temporal details, impairing speech understanding in noise. This study examined whether lifelong musical training protects against such age‑related auditory decline. Auditory processing was assessed in 74 lifelong musicians and 89 nonmusicians aged 18 to 91. Musicians showed a slower decline in gap detection and speech‑in‑noise performance and a persistent advantage in mistuned harmonic detection, while pure‑tone thresholds declined similarly in both groups, indicating a central auditory benefit of musical training.

Abstract

Age-related decline in auditory perception reflects changes in the peripheral and central auditory systems. These age-related changes include a reduced ability to detect minute spectral and temporal details in an auditory signal, which contributes to a decreased ability to understand speech in noisy environments. Given that musical training in young adults has been shown to improve these auditory abilities, we investigated the possibility that musicians experience less age-related decline in auditory perception. To test this hypothesis we measured auditory processing abilities in lifelong musicians (N = 74) and nonmusicians (N = 89), aged between 18 and 91. Musicians demonstrated less age-related decline in some auditory tasks (i.e., gap detection and speech in noise), and had a lifelong advantage in others (i.e., mistuned harmonic detection). Importantly, the rate of age-related decline in hearing sensitivity, as measured by pure-tone thresholds, was similar between both groups, demonstrating that musicians experience less age-related decline in central auditory processing.