Skilled musicians are not subject to the McGurk effect

The McGurk effect is a compelling illusion in which humans auditorily perceive mismatched audiovisual speech as a completely different syllable. In this study evidences are provided that professional musicians are not subject to this illusion, possibly because of their finer auditory or attentional abilities. 80 healthy age-matched graduate students volunteered to the study. 40 were musicians of Brescia Luca Marenzio Conservatory of Music with at least 8-13 years of musical academic studies. /la/, /da/, /ta/, /ga/, /ka/, /na/, /ba/, /pa/ phonemes were presented to participants in audiovisual congruent and incongruent conditions, or in unimodal (only visual or only auditory) conditions while engaged in syllable recognition tasks. Overall musicians showed no significant McGurk effect for any of the phonemes. Controls showed a marked McGurk effect for several phonemes (including alveolar-nasal, velar-occlusive and bilabial ones). The results indicate that the early and intensive musical training might affect the way the auditory cortex process phonetic information.

L'articolo riporta i risultati di uno studio inerente la nota illusione percettiva dell'"effetto McGurk" in virtù della quale un percettore umano percepisce una sillaba uditiva discorde quando gli viene presentata una rappresentazione visiva dell'articolazione della sillaba incongruente condotto su musicisti professionisti. I risultati hanno dimostrato che questi individui non mostrano significativi illusioni McGurk, dimostrando così che un intensivo e pluriannuale training musicale può influenzare il modo in cui la corteccia uditiva elabora l'informazione fonetica, probabilmente a causa di processi di plasticità neurale su cui si fondano le abilità specifiche (o Cognitive-Skills) acquisite.