Although the brain mechanisms underlying these perceptual enhancements remain undetermined, there is growing evidence that musical training hones auditory perception through the neural tuning of auditory pathway mechanisms (reviewed in Kraus & Chandrasekaran, 2010 [43]).
While research into the impact of musical training on aging processes is a new avenue of investigation, our results indicate a positive role of lifelong musical training on auditory perception and cognitive processes.
In order to understand the perceptual outcome of IC stimulation, we trained monkeys to report their auditory perception in a frequency discrimination task in which the animal had to decide which of two sounds was higher in frequency.
Examples of techniques employed in this approach include auditory perception training, patterned sensory enhancement, and therapeutic singing, which may be used to improve cognitive, sensorimotor, or speech functions, respectively.
The training programme, aimed at improving auditory perception and lexical recognition of 3-channel noise-vocoded speech, demonstrated a significant difference between pre- and post-training repeat vocoded spoken sentence stimuli trials for all behavioural measures (articulation, semantic and the combined score).
Furthermore, we performed a cross-classification analysis between auditory perception and imagery, i.e., we trained the classifier on runs with sound stimulation and tested on runs with pure imagery and vice versa.
Sounds are direct or immediate objects of auditory perception.
Interestingly, in their study of novice pianists trained only for 5 days, Lahav et al. (2007) found increased activation in such bilateral premotor and right inferior frontal regions during passive auditory perception of excerpts from melodies that participants had learned to play, suggesting that some performing arts training effects may emerge quite early in the acquisition of expertise.
Interestingly, activity in the vermis has also been observed in auditory perception experiments in which stimuli are presented rhythmically, for example trains of tones or frequency modulated sweeps [ 22] or clicks [ 23] and pairs of words [ 24].
Based on the Readiness Test results, pre-school teachers should give greater attention to developing skills related to visual perception, auditory perception and number-letter knowledge in preparation for students' entry to Grade 1. Teachers should be trained to use assessment procedures that focus on age-appropriate skill acquisition rather than acquisition on facts.
Given the observations from our auditory training regimen, we therefore conclude that perceptual discrimination training alone is not sufficient to improve vocal accuracy in non-musicians, supporting the suggested dissociation between auditory perception and vocal production.
