Numerous studies have reported links between musical training and enhanced neural processing and improved perception of speech. Such findings suggest a role for experience-dependent plasticity in the early auditory system, which may have meaningful perceptual consequences. However, the robustness and generalizability of any musician advantage remains unclear for several reasons. First, sample sizes have often been small and the samples have represented extreme ends of the musical spectrum; second, the nature and magnitudes of the advantages have often been small or inconsistent; and third, methodological differences and varying analytical techniques have complicated direct comparisons between studies. This multi-site study examined the robustness of the musician advantage across the adult lifespan by replicating and extending eight key experiments involving both perception and neural coding across a large sample of listeners (n > 300) at six universities (Boston University, Carnegie Mellon University, Purdue University, University of Minnesota, University of Rochester, and University of Western Ontario). All participants were tested on all eight experiments in a laboratory setting, including speech and non-speech informational masking, speech perception in noise and babble, and two physiological measures of fundamental-frequency encoding of speech sounds using electroencephalography. Participants completed additional measures to control for potential confounding factors, including a measure of musical aptitude, a cognitive assessment (Ravens Advanced Progressive Matrices), a measure of extended high-frequency hearing, and survey questions related to personality and socio-economic status. This talk will focus on a subset of the results related to speech neural coding and perception. All five previously published findings related to enhanced speech neural encoding in musicians failed to replicate. Of the three speech perception measures tested, only one remained significant after controlling for cognition and age. The results provide in-depth and highly statistically powered insights into the nature and robustness of the musician advantage across the adult lifespan.

Acknowledgements: Supported by NSF-BCS grant 1840818 and NIH grant R01 DC005216.