The human auditory system does far more than detect sound: it extracts meaning from speech, derives emotion from music, and supports the perception of acoustic features such as pitch, rhythm, timbre, and prosody that are central to both language and musical experience. Over the past two decades, advances in neuroimaging, electrophysiology, and computational modeling have revealed that the cognitive processes supporting language and music share neural resources to a greater extent than previously assumed. At the same time, the precise nature of the interactions between linguistic and musical processing remains an active area of inquiry, with many open questions regarding how these domains overlap, interact, and dissociate across individuals and populations.

This Research Topic aims to bring together interdisciplinary research exploring the cognitive and neural mechanisms that underlie the perception and processing of language and music. By assembling contributions from audiology, cognitive neuroscience, linguistics, music cognition, and computational sciences, we seek to advance our understanding of auditory cognition across the lifespan, from paediatric to older adult populations. A key goal is to foster dialogue between research communities that often study these phenomena in isolation, ultimately promoting integrative frameworks that better capture the complexity of auditory cognition. We welcome both empirical and theoretical contributions, including work addressing clinical and applied dimensions such as hearing loss, deafness, cochlear implantation, neurodivergence, disability, and auditory training or rehabilitation.

The following is a non-exhaustive list of themes to be covered in this Research Topic:
o Neural correlates of speech and music processing, including shared and distinct mechanisms
o Perception of pitch, rhythm, timbre, and prosody across linguistic and musical contexts
o Auditory scene analysis and its relevance to language and music perception in complex environments
o Binaural hearing, spatial auditory processing, and the integration of inputs across ears in language and music perception
o The role of auditory working memory and attention in language and music comprehension
o Cross-domain transfer effects between musical training and language abilities
o Developmental and lifespan perspectives on auditory cognition for speech and music
o Neuroplasticity and adaptive changes in auditory processing, including reorganization following hearing loss, deafness, or auditory intervention (e.g., cochlear implantation)
o Auditory cognition in deafness, hearing loss, auditory neuropathy, cochlear implantation, neurodivergence, and disability
o Auditory training and rehabilitation strategies targeting speech and music outcomes
o Computational and modeling approaches to speech and music processing

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Auditory Cognition: Language and Music