A new study has said that playing musical instruments helps kids' process speech more accurately in noisy classrooms and understands nuances of language, which are expressed by slight alteration in the human voice.

The research, headed by Nina Kraus, professor of neurobiology, physiology and communication sciences at Northwestern University, stated that tutoring through music can be an effectual approach in aiding children, particularly those with autism, develops more accurate encoded speech.

Kraus said, "People's hearing systems are fine-tuned by the experiences they've had with sound throughout their lives."

"Music training is not only beneficial for processing music stimuli. We've found that years of music training may also improve how sounds are processed for language and emotion."

Researchers in the Kraus laboratory offered up the first concrete proof that playing a musical instrument notably improves the brainstem's compassion to speech sounds.

The discoveries are in agreement with other researches they have carried out disclosing that anomalies in brainstem sound encoding in some learning-disabled kids can be lessened with auditory training.

The Kraus research laboratory has a unique approach for presenting how the nervous system reacts to the acoustic properties of speech and music sounds with sub-millisecond accuracy.

"Individuals with music training show a selective fine-tuning of relevant aspects of auditory signals," said Kraus.

"Playing music engages the ability to extract relevant patterns, such as the sound of one's own instrument, harmonies and rhythms, from the soundscape.

"Not surprisingly, musicians' nervous systems are more effective at utilising the patterns in music and speech alike."

Kraus showed these results recently at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. (With Input from Agencies)