The University of Memphis will be receiving a $20,000 grant from the GRAMMY Foundation, which will go toward researching the benefits of musical training in strengthening the ear and preventing noise-induced hearing loss.
The grant to the U of M is a part of an allotted $200,000 grant that the GRAMMY Foundation has dispersed between 15 recipients to fund music research and sound preservation.
The research will involve around 40 young adults, both musicians and non-musicians, to see if those involved have either strengthened ears or noise-induced hearing loss.
The study will be a collaboration between the Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience Lab and the Hearing Science Lab, directed by Gavin Bidelman and Shaum Bhagat respectively.
The purpose of the research is to see whether or not musical training impacts hearing health.
The researchers will recruit musicians from the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music, all practicing classical and instrumental music, and non-musicians from the community and compare their auditory responses.
Those researching will use otoacoustic emissions, or OAEs, to measure sounds made in the cochlea, or a recording in the inner ear. This would allow the researchers to compare hearing health between the two groups.
The participants won't have to listen to music or even engage with certain sounds but records the OAEs while a person is asleep and still diagnose a measure of hearing function.
Gavin Bidelman, director of the Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, already has an idea how the experiment will turn out.
"We do know that musicians do well on auditory tests," Bidelman said. "Musicians have enhanced auditory senses, and we suspect that musical training will give you some form of protection against loud noises."
The alternative to this hypothesis is that musical training will damage the musician's hearing health.
"If we can identify that musicians are at an increased risk for hearing loss, that could lead to hearing protection and educational programs tailored to professional musicians," Bidelman said.
According to Bidelman, this will be the first systematic study of how musicianship might strengthen the ear and provide some resilience to noise-related hearing loss.
