Auditory Dorsal Stream Connectivity Supports the Older Musicians' Preserved Audiovisual SIN Perception and Visual Benefit

Poster Session D - Monday, April 15, 2024, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Sheraton Hall ABC

Lei Zhang¹ (lzhang@research.baycrest.org), Yi Du^2,3.4,5, Claude Alain^1,6; ¹Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, Toronto, ON M6A 2E1, Canada, ²CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China, ³Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China, ⁴CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Shanghai 200031, China, ⁵Chinese Institute for Brain Research, Beijing 102206, China, ⁶Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, ON M8V 2S4, Canada

Musical training, an intensive process involving auditory, visual, and motor systems, is proposed to counteract age-related decline in Speech-in-Noise (SIN) perception. While it’s clear that visual lip movements aid SIN perception, no study has yet explored whether musical training enhances audiovisual SIN perception in older adults, or the neural mechanisms underlying this process. In this fMRI study, 24 young non-musicians (YNM), 25 older non-musicians (ONM) and 25 older musicians (OM) discriminated syllables-in-noise under lip still and lip congruent movements conditions. OM outperformed ONM but worse than YNM under both conditions. Interestingly, OM showed greater visual benefit than ONM and matched YNM. Through psychophysiological interactions analysis, we found that OM exhibited a similar functional connectivity (FC) level in auditory dorsal stream (bilateral posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG) and supramarginal gyrus (SMG) to motor areas including bilateral precentral gyrus (PrCG), supplementary motor areas (SMA), and speech motor areas) as YNM and less FC than ONM. With intersubject spatial correlation, we found OM showed a more similar functional correction spatial pattern in right superior PrCG seeded from right SMG to YNM than ONM. For visual enhancement, OM showed greater visual enhancement of FC from right pSTG to right motor areas than ONM, which also predicted a greater visual enhancement for ONM. Additionally, OM also showed greater structural connectivity along the right auditory dorsal stream, as indicated by greater neural density and lower orientation dispersion. Our findings suggest that auditory dorsal stream connectivity supports preserved audiovisual SIN perception and visual benefit observed in OM.

Topic Area: PERCEPTION & ACTION: Multisensory