Don: Hi Yaël, what's up?

Yaël: Well Don, I just got off the phone with my friend. She's had a run of bad luck with      relationships. She says that from now on she's only going to date musicians!

D: Why? She really loves music?

Y: No, that's not it. She thinks that somehow musicians are better than non-musicians at      understanding emotions. That seems a little far-fetched to me.

D: Actually Yaël, there is some evidence that people with musical training are better at      picking out emotional cues in sound than people without the same musical      background.

     A team of neuroscientists at Northwestern University compared the auditory      brainstem responses of musicians and non-musicians to different emotion-laden      human sounds, like crying babies.

     The results were not exactly what the researchers expected. They found that      musicians' brainstems paid attention to a more complex part of the sound known to      carry more emotional elements. But their brains tended to de-emphasize the simpler      part of the sound, which carries less emotional content. This wasn't true for non-      musicians.

     The more musical experience and training a musician had, the more their nervous      systems seemed able to process emotion in sound. The auditory centers in their      brainstems showed a greater response than those of the non-musicians to these      complex sound cues.

Y: Wow Don, that's really interesting. Those results seem to suggest that more      experience and expertise with sound can actually change how your brain works.      Maybe my friend is onto something with her plan to only date musicians.

D: Well, musicians might be better at hearing the emotions in your voice, but that doesn't      mean they're any better at knowing what to do about it!  

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A Moment of Science^®