Lateralization of Components of Melodic Stimuli: Musicians versus Nonmusicians

Abstract

Using dichotic listening methodology, 25 musicians and 25 nonmusicians were compared on four cerebral lateralization tasks: melodies, tonal patterns, rhythm patterns, and verbal stimuli. Musicians demonstrated superior performance on the music tasks with regard to overall scores, degree of improvement during a second administration of the tasks, and number of test trials for which both left and right ear items were correctly identified. No group differences were found for verbal stimuli. The only lateralization difference observed was in rhythm pattern recognition, for which musicians revealed a right hemisphere superiority as contrasted to a left hemisphere dominance for nonmusicians. Results are interpreted in terms of superior cognitive strategies of musicians as a function of musical training.