Dana L Strait

Dana L Strait
University of Maryland, College Park | UMD, UMCP, University of Maryland College Park · Institute for Systems Research

Ph.D.

About

39
Publications
11,028
Reads
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4,007
Citations
Additional affiliations
December 2012 - June 2013
Northwestern University
Position
  • Research Associate
September 2006 - November 2012
Northwestern University
Position
  • PhD Student
Education
September 2006 - November 2012
Northwestern University
Field of study
  • Neuroscience

Publications

Publications (39)
Article
Full-text available
The perception and neural representation of acoustically similar speech sounds underlie language development. Music training hones the perception of minute acoustic differences that distinguish sounds; this training may generalize to speech processing given that adult musicians have enhanced neural differentiation of similar speech syllables compar...
Article
Attention induces synchronicity in neuronal firing for the encoding of a given stimulus at the exclusion of others. Recently, we reported decreased variability in scalp-recorded cortical evoked potentials to attended compared with ignored speech in adults. Here we aimed to determine the developmental time course for this neural index of auditory at...
Article
Musicians have increased resilience to the effects of noise on speech perception and its neural underpinnings. We do not know, however, how early in life these enhancements arise. We compared auditory brainstem responses to speech in noise in 32 preschool children, half of whom were engaged in music training. Thirteen children returned for testing...
Article
Full-text available
Attentional limits make it difficult to comprehend concurrent speech streams. However, multiple musical streams are processed comparatively easily. Coherence may be a key difference between music and stimuli like speech, which does not rely on the integration of multiple streams for comprehension. The musical organization between melodies in a comp...
Article
Musician children and adults demonstrate biological distinctions in auditory processing relative to nonmusicians. For example, musician children and adults have more robust neural encoding of speech harmonics, more adaptive sound processing, and more precise neural encoding of acoustically similar sounds; these enhancements may contribute to musici...
Article
Full-text available
Selective attention decreases trial-to-trial variability in cortical auditory-evoked activity. This effect increases over the course of maturation, potentially reflecting the gradual development of selective attention and inhibitory control. Work in adults indicates that music training may alter the development of this neural response characteristi...
Article
Full-text available
Children from disadvantaged backgrounds often face impoverished auditory environments, such as greater exposure to ambient noise and fewer opportunities to participate in complex language interactions during development. These circumstances increase their risk for academic failure and dropout. Given the academic and neural benefits associated with...
Article
Full-text available
Children from low-socioeconomic backgrounds tend to fall progressively further behind their higher-income peers over the course of their academic careers. Music training has been associated with enhanced language and learning skills, suggesting that music programs could play a role in helping low-income children to stay on track academically. Using...
Article
Full-text available
The young nervous system is primed for sensory learning, facilitating the acquisition of language and communication skills. Social and linguistic impoverishment can limit these learning opportunities, eventually leading to language-related challenges such as poor reading. Music training offers a promising auditory learning strategy by directing att...
Article
Full-text available
Significance Sensitivity to fine timing cues in speech is thought to play a key role in language learning, facilitating the development of phonological processing. In fact, a link between beat synchronization, which requires fine auditory–motor synchrony, and language skills has been found in school-aged children, as well as adults. Here, we show t...
Article
Full-text available
Musicians are often reported to have enhanced neurophysiological functions, especially in the auditory system. Musical training is thought to improve nervous system function by focusing attention on meaningful acoustic cues, and these improvements in auditory processing cascade to language and cognitive skills. Correlational studies have reported m...
Article
Infants who have more power within the gamma frequency range at rest develop better language and cognitive abilities over their first 3 years of life (Benasich et al., 2008). This positive trend may reflect the gradual increase in resting gamma power that peaks at about 4 years (Takano & Ogawa, 1998): infants further along the maturational curve ma...
Article
Full-text available
Aging results in pervasive declines in nervous system function. In the auditory system, these declines include neural timing delays in response to fast-changing speech elements; this causes older adults to experience difficulty understanding speech, especially in challenging listening environments. These age-related declines are not inevitable, how...
Article
Full-text available
While hearing in noise is a complex task, even in high levels of noise humans demonstrate remarkable hearing ability. Binaural hearing, which involves the integration and analysis of incoming sounds from both ears, is an important mechanism that promotes hearing in complex listening environments. Analyzing inter-ear differences helps differentiate...
Article
Full-text available
What makes a musician? In this review, we discuss innate and experience-dependent factors that mold the musician brain in addition to presenting new data in children that indicate that some neural enhancements in musicians unfold with continued training over development. We begin by addressing effects of training on musical expertise, presenting ne...
Article
Full-text available
Aging results in pervasive declines in nervous system function. In the auditory system, these declines include neural timing delays in response to fast-changing speech elements; this causes older adults to experience difficulty understanding speech, especially in challenging listening environments. These age-related declines are not inevitable, how...
Article
The brain’s activity at rest changes dramatically as it develops. Resting oscillatory power within delta and theta bands, for example, decreases steadily between childhood and late adolescence (Gasser et al., 1988). Individual differences in resting EEG power have been linked to gray matter volume (Whitford et al., 2007). Thus, decreases in resting...
Article
One of the benefits musicians derive from their training is an increased ability to detect small differences between sounds. Here, we asked whether musicians' experience discriminating sounds on the basis of small acoustic differences confers advantages in the subcortical differentiation of closely related speech sounds (e.g., /ba/ and /ga/), disti...
Article
Musicians benefit from real-life advantages, such as a greater ability to hear speech in noise and to remember sounds, although the biological mechanisms driving such advantages remain undetermined. Furthermore, the extent to which these advantages are a consequence of musical training or innate characteristics that predispose a given individual to...
Article
Full-text available
Human hearing depends on a combination of cognitive and sensory processes that function by means of an interactive circuitry of bottom-up and top-down neural pathways, extending from the cochlea to the cortex and back again. Given that similar neural pathways are recruited to process sounds related to both music and language, it is not surprising t...
Article
Full-text available
Neural sensitivity to acoustic regularities supports fundamental human behaviors such as hearing in noise and reading. Although the failure to encode acoustic regularities in ongoing speech has been associated with language and literacy deficits, how auditory expertise, such as the expertise that is associated with musical skill, relates to the bra...
Article
Musical training strengthens speech perception in the presence of background noise. Given that the ability to make use of speech sound regularities, such as pitch, underlies perceptual acuity in challenging listening environments, we asked whether musicians' enhanced speech-in-noise perception is facilitated by increased neural sensitivity to acous...
Article
Full-text available
Even in the quietest of rooms, our senses are perpetually inundated by a barrage of sounds, requiring the auditory system to adapt to a variety of listening conditions in order to extract signals of interest (e.g., one speaker's voice amidst others). Brain networks that promote selective attention are thought to sharpen the neural encoding of a tar...
Data
The musician advantage for auditory working memory, temporal resolution and SIN perception remains even when covarying for WASI vocabulary. (DOCX)
Data
To verify that the observed correlations between auditory working memory and SIN performance (QuickSIN and HINT) were not an artifact of musicians' enhanced auditory working memory, the relationships between these variables for the musician and non-musician group through separate analyses were explored with correlational analyses. Within-group corr...
Article
Full-text available
Much of our daily communication occurs in the presence of background noise, compromising our ability to hear. While understanding speech in noise is a challenge for everyone, it becomes increasingly difficult as we age. Although aging is generally accompanied by hearing loss, this perceptual decline cannot fully account for the difficulties experie...
Article
A growing body of research suggests that cognitive functions, such as attention and memory, drive perception by tuning sensory mechanisms to relevant acoustic features. Long-term musical experience also modulates lower-level auditory function, although the mechanisms by which this occurs remain uncertain. In order to tease apart the mechanisms that...
Article
To understand how musical experience influences subcortical processing of emotionally salient sounds, we recorded brain stem potentials to affective vocal sounds. Our results suggest that auditory expertise engenders subcortical auditory processing efficiency that is intricately connected with acoustic features important for the communication of em...
Article
Musicians exhibit enhanced perception of emotion in speech, although the biological foundations for this advantage remain unconfirmed. In order to gain a better understanding for the influences of musical experience on neural processing of emotionally salient sounds, we recorded brainstem potentials to affective human vocal sounds. Musicians showed...
Article
Musicians have a variety of perceptual and cortical specializations compared to non-musicians. Recent studies have shown that potentials evoked from primarily brainstem structures are enhanced in musicians, compared to non-musicians. Specifically, musicians have more robust representations of pitch periodicity and faster neural timing to sound onse...

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