Lagrois Marie-Élaine, Peretz Isabelle, Zendel Benjamin Rich
International Laboratory for Brain, Music, and Sound Research, Montréal, QC, Canada.
Département de Psychologie, Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada.
Front Neurosci. 2018 Feb 13;12:54. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2018.00054. eCollection 2018.
Aging is associated with decline in both cognitive and auditory abilities. However, evidence suggests that music perception is relatively spared, despite relying on auditory and cognitive abilities that tend to decline with age. It is therefore likely that older adults engage compensatory mechanisms which should be evident in the underlying functional neurophysiology related to processing music. In other words, the perception of musical structure would be similar or enhanced in older compared to younger adults, while the underlying functional neurophysiology would be different. The present study aimed to compare the electrophysiological brain responses of younger and older adults to melodic incongruities during a passive and active listening task. Older and younger adults had a similar ability to detect an out-of-tune incongruity (i.e., non-chromatic), while the amplitudes of the ERAN and P600 were reduced in older adults compared to younger adults. On the other hand, out-of-key incongruities (i.e., non-diatonic), were better detected by older adults compared to younger adults, while the ERAN and P600 were comparable between the two age groups. This pattern of results indicates that perception of tonal structure is preserved in older adults, despite age-related neurophysiological changes in how melodic violations are processed.
衰老与认知和听觉能力的衰退有关。然而，有证据表明，尽管音乐感知依赖于随着年龄增长而往往会衰退的听觉和认知能力，但它相对未受影响。因此，老年人可能会采用补偿机制，这在与音乐处理相关的潜在功能性神经生理学中应该是明显的。换句话说，与年轻人相比，老年人对音乐结构的感知可能相似或增强，而潜在的功能性神经生理学则会有所不同。本研究旨在比较年轻人和老年人在被动和主动聆听任务中对旋律不和谐的脑电反应。年轻人和老年人检测到不协调（即非半音）的能力相似，而与年轻人相比，老年人的失谐负波（ERAN）和P600的波幅降低。另一方面，与年轻人相比，老年人能更好地检测到调性不协调（即非全音阶），而两个年龄组之间的ERAN和P600相当。这种结果模式表明，尽管在处理旋律违规方面存在与年龄相关的神经生理变化，但老年人对音调结构的感知仍然得以保留。
