Abstract:

Old adults with normal hearing often suffer from the loss in the ability of speech perception in noisy environment. Alleviation of this type of auditory aging has remarkably psychological and social benefits. Musical training significantly improves the speech perception of old adults in noisy environment. In addition, the timing and precision of auditory brainstem processing of speech signal in old adults are also enhanced if they have musical experience. This enhancement of neural processing appears to play an important role in the speech-perception improvement induced by the musical training.

Key words: musical experience, speech perception, aging