Dissociating the processing of operatic and natural vocal sounds through interference effects on working memory

Bihari, Adél and Nárai, Ádám and Kleber, Boris and Zsuga, Judit and Hermann, Petra and Vidnyánszky, Zoltán (2026) Dissociating the processing of operatic and natural vocal sounds through interference effects on working memory. IDEGGYOGYASZATI SZEMLE / CLINICAL NEUROSCIENCE, 79 (7-8). pp. 266-273. ISSN 0019-1442

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Abstract

Background and purpose-Mastering the operatic voice requires many years of inten sive training and leads to a widespread, glo bal impact on the structural and functional organization of the human brain. However, whether training and experience in produc ing operatic style singing develops differen tial neural representation for operatic and natural voices in opera singers remains unexplored. Methods-We addressed this question by investigating the representation of short melodies sung in two distinct styles-a full operatic voice with vibrato (operatic style) and a straight voice without vibrato (natural style)-in working memory (WM) of profes sionally trained opera singers and amateur choir singers, using a distractor interference paradigm. Results-The results revealed that distrac tor effects on WM performance for oper atic, but not for natural voices significantly differed depending on the type of delay distractors (P=0.0011). WM performance for operatic voices was significantly higher in the case of congruent, operatic voice distractor stimuli as compared to incongruent, natural voice distractor stimuli (P=0.0043). Conclusion-Our findings that operatic and natural voice distractors have differential ef fects on WM performance of both opera and choir singers for operatic voices imply that partially separate neural resources might be involved in maintaining natural and operatic voices in singers' WM, independent of any prior opera singing training.

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