The saying “Music to my ears” could soon have a very different meaning for people dealing with hearing loss.
Researchers at the University of Helsinki and the University College London examined the effects of musical activities on hearing loss in children and the results of the study illustrated the impact and benefit received by exposing people to music.
Measuring Speech-in-Noise Performance
Researchers looked at 43 young children in a 14 to 16 month study where they measured speech-in-noise performance. Of those enrolled, 21 children had cochlear implants, while the remaining 22 had normal hearing ability. Armed with the knowledge that the children with implants had difficulty understanding speech perception before the start of the study, researchers developed control and test sets, assigning participants to a non-singing (control) and singing (test) group.
For children in the singing group, a significant improvement in awareness and speech-in-noise performance was observed compared to children in the non-singing group.
The Ears Are Trained by Music
There is a tremendous amount of research showing the advantages to cognitive ability and speech processing offered by musical training and this study is only one of them. In noisy environments, speech perception can be improved by musical training, and these results were backed by research conducted by the Montreal Neurological Institute
Identifying speech syllables through a variety of background noises was the goal of this study which examined 15 musicians and 15 non-musicians.
The ages of the participants in the research by Drs. Yi and Roberts, unlike the Helsinki/London study, averaged 22 years old. While participants weren’t necessarily hearing impaired, the difference in results amongst individuals who were trained musically and those who weren’t was considerable.
Musicians Outperform Non-Musicians
The two groups performed similarly under conditions without any noise, but the musicians would separate themselves as the study continued, outperforming non-musicians at all other signal-to-noise rates. Musicians have enhanced left interior frontal and right auditory regions of the brain which most likely accounts for this ability to perform well on these tests.
But there’s more to the benefits of the musical training revealed by Dr. Yi and Robert’s research. According to the study’s findings, musical training reinforced the participant’s auditory-motor network, refining and uniting the auditory system and speech motor system to improve hearing.
These adult musicians in this study had all been trained when they were younger and had at least ten years of training. This again supports the recent analysis that musical training can have a powerful impact.
Beethoven’s Battle With Hearing Loss
Hearing loss has been a problem for some of the world’s most famous composers and musicians. Most notably, Ludwig van Beethoven who started to lose his hearing in his 20’s.
Though Beethoven’s young childhood musical training would be regarded as severe by present standards, the foundation of the training might have been the gateway to prolonging his career as a composer. Over the last 10 years of his life, Beethoven was, in fact, almost completely deaf. In spite of that, many of his most cherished pieces came over his last 15 years.
References
Can children with hearing loss benefit from music and singing?
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-12-musical-affects-speech.html
