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___.
【视听版科学小组荣誉出品】
hearing loss accompanies discern had no advantage filtering sound
年纪大了，听力也随之减退了，不过有一群人却不然：没错，那就是音乐家。科学家们对74名音乐家及89名非音乐家进行了听力测试。受试的音乐家必须至少从16岁就开始学习音乐，并接受过至少6年的正规训练。 测试内容有：间隙辨别——测试判断持续声音中短暂中断的能力；和声音调——测试频率分辨能力；噪音演讲——测试嘈杂背景下听取讲话的能力；轻音入门——测试轻音听力。 轻音入门测试中，音乐家没有任何优势，但在其他几项测试中表现相当突出。这项研究报告刊登在《心理学与衰老》杂志上。 音乐家表现较突出的三项测试，相对于通过耳朵分析输入内容来说，都需要较高级别的大脑运转，也就表明，音乐训练让大脑过滤声音的功力大大增强了。