Some people may be protected from the ___1___ that often ___2___ aging: yes, musicians. Scientists gave hearing tests to 74 musicians and 89 non-musicians. For the study, musicians had to be playing since at least age 16, and have a minimum of six years formal training.

Scientists tested: gap detection, the ability to hear brief breaks in continuous sound; mistuned harmonic detection, the ability to ___3___ frequencies; speech in noise, the ability to hear conversation against a noisy background; and pure tone thresholds, this is the ability to hear tones as they get quieter.

Musicians ___4___ when it came to pure tone thresholds. But they performed significantly better in all other tests. The work is in the journal Psychology and Aging. [Link to come.]

The three tests in which musicians have an advantage all rely on higher-level processing in the brain, as opposed to analyzing input at the level of the ear. Which suggests that musical training makes the brain better at ___5___.
【視聽(tīng)版科學(xué)小組榮譽(yù)出品】
hearing loss accompanies discern had no advantage filtering sound
年紀(jì)大了，聽(tīng)力也隨之減退了，不過(guò)有一群人卻不然：沒(méi)錯(cuò)，那就是音樂(lè)家?？茖W(xué)家們對(duì)74名音樂(lè)家及89名非音樂(lè)家進(jìn)行了聽(tīng)力測(cè)試。受試的音樂(lè)家必須至少?gòu)?6歲就開(kāi)始學(xué)習(xí)音樂(lè)，并接受過(guò)至少6年的正規(guī)訓(xùn)練。 測(cè)試內(nèi)容有：間隙辨別——測(cè)試判斷持續(xù)聲音中短暫中斷的能力；和聲音調(diào)——測(cè)試頻率分辨能力；噪音演講——測(cè)試嘈雜背景下聽(tīng)取講話的能力；輕音入門——測(cè)試輕音聽(tīng)力。 輕音入門測(cè)試中，音樂(lè)家沒(méi)有任何優(yōu)勢(shì)，但在其他幾項(xiàng)測(cè)試中表現(xiàn)相當(dāng)突出。這項(xiàng)研究報(bào)告刊登在《心理學(xué)與衰老》雜志上。 音樂(lè)家表現(xiàn)較突出的三項(xiàng)測(cè)試，相對(duì)于通過(guò)耳朵分析輸入內(nèi)容來(lái)說(shuō)，都需要較高級(jí)別的大腦運(yùn)轉(zhuǎn)，也就表明，音樂(lè)訓(xùn)練讓大腦過(guò)濾聲音的功力大大增強(qiáng)了。