Musicians' enhanced auditory perception depends on the instrument they play.

Professionally trained musicians show enhanced auditory perception of music. Krishnan et al. show that this expertise is modulated by the instrument played by the musician:

Studies of classical musicians have demonstrated that expertise modulates neural responses during auditory perception. However, it remains unclear whether such expertise-dependent plasticity is modulated by the instrument that a musician plays. To examine whether the recruitment of sensorimotor regions during music perception is modulated by instrument-specific experience, we studied nonclassical musicians—beatboxers, who predominantly use their vocal apparatus to produce sound, and guitarists, who use their hands. We contrast fMRI activity in 20 beatboxers, 20 guitarists, and 20 nonmusicians as they listen to novel beatboxing and guitar pieces. All musicians show enhanced activity in sensorimotor regions (IFG, IPC, and SMA), but only when listening to the musical instrument they can play. Using independent component analysis, we find expertise-selective enhancement in sensorimotor networks, which are distinct from changes in attentional networks. These findings suggest that long-term sensorimotor experience facilitates access to the posterodorsal “how” pathway during auditory processing.

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