Musical training modifies neural areas associated with both music and language and enhances speech perception and discrimination by engaging the right hemisphere regions classically associated with music processing. On these bases we hypothesized that participants with extended musical training could have reduced left-hemisphere dominance for speech. In order to verify this hypothesis, two groups of right-handed individuals, one with long-term musical training and one with no musical training, participated to a Dichotic Fused Word Test consisting in the simultaneous presentation of different pairs of rhyming words and pseudo-words, one to the left ear and one to the right one. Participants typically show a greater number of reports of the right ear input than of the left one. This effect, called right ear advantage (REA), reflects left-hemisphere dominance for speech processing. In our study, we expected that musicians had a reduced dichotic listening REA for linguistic stimuli. The main result of this study was the attenuation, and in some cases the complete suppression, of the dichotic effect in musicians, since most of them perceived both words, simultaneously. This finding suggests that both hemispheres may have similar verbal competence and contribute to speech processing in parallel. This contrasts with the normal brain organization in which hemispheres cooperate but are engaged in different analysis of speech. The "two words" perception also extended to pseudo-words. Thus, musical training, by shaping the language circuits, could produce the enhancement of bilateral processing of stimuli with linguistic characteristics (i.e. phonetics) independently of semantics.

中文翻译：

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长期的音乐训练可以改变语言处理：Dichotic Fused Word Test研究。

音乐训练通过使与音乐处理相关联的右半球区域参与进来，修改了与音乐和语言相关的神经区域，并增强了语音感知和辨别力。基于这些基础，我们假设接受过音乐训练的参与者可能会减少左半球的言语控制能力。为了验证这一假设，两组惯用右手的人，一组接受了长期音乐训练，一组未经音乐训练，参加了二分法融合词测试，该测试包括同时呈现不同对的押韵词和伪造词。话，一只在左耳，另一只在右耳。参与者通常显示的右耳输入报告要多于左耳的报告。这种效应称为右耳优势（REA），反映了左半球在语音处理中的优势。在我们的研究中，我们期望音乐家对语言刺激的二分音听音REA降低。这项研究的主要结果是降低了音乐家的二分频效果，在某些情况下甚至完全抑制了二分频效果，因为他们中的大多数人同时感知了两个单词。这一发现表明，两个半球可能具有相似的语言能力，并有助于并行进行语音处理。这与正常的大脑组织形成对比，在正常的大脑组织中，半球相互配合，但参与了不同的语音分析。“两个单词”的感知也扩展到伪单词。因此，通过塑造语言回路，进行音乐训练可以增强具有语言特征的双边刺激处理（即