MPI für empirische Ästhetik
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Cortical tracking of stimulus features (such as the envelope) is a crucial tractable neural mechanism, allowing us to investigate how we process continuous music. We here tested whether cortical and behavioural tracking of beat, typically related to rhythm processing, are modulated by pitch predictability. In two experiments (n=20, n=52), participants’ ability to tap along to the beat of musical sequences was measured for tonal (high pitch predictability) and atonal (low pitch predictability) music. In Experiment 1, we additionally measured participants’ EEG and analysed cortical tracking of the acoustic envelope and of pitch surprisal (using IDyOM). In both experiments, finger-tapping performance was better in the tonal than the atonal condition, indicating a positive effect of pitch predictability on behavioural rhythm processing. Neural data revealed that the acoustic envelope was tracked stronger while listening to atonal than tonal music, potentially reflecting listeners’ violated pitch expectations. Our findings show that cortical envelope tracking, beyond reflecting musical rhythm processing, is modulated by pitch predictability (as well as musical expertise and enjoyment). Stronger cortical surprisal tracking was linked to overall worse envelope tracking, and worse finger-tapping performance for atonal music. Specifically, the low pitch predictability in atonal music seems to draw attentional resources resulting in a reduced ability to follow the rhythm behaviourally. Overall, cortical envelope and surprisal tracking were differentially related to behaviour in tonal and atonal music, likely reflecting differential processing under conditions of high and low predictability. Taken together, our results show diverse effects of pitch predictability on musical rhythm processing.
The neural processing of speech and music is still a matter of debate. A long tradition that assumes shared processing capacities for the two domains contrasts with views that assume domain-specific processing. We here contribute to this topic by investigating, in a functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) study, ecologically valid stimuli that are identical in wording and differ only in that one group is typically spoken (or silently read), whereas the other is sung: poems and their respective musical settings. We focus on the melodic properties of spoken poems and their sung musical counterparts by looking at proportions of significant autocorrelations (PSA) based on pitch values extracted from their recordings. Following earlier studies, we assumed a bias of poem-processing towards the left and a bias for song-processing on the right hemisphere. Furthermore, PSA values of poems and songs were expected to explain variance in left- vs. right-temporal brain areas, while continuous liking ratings obtained in the scanner should modulate activity in the reward network. Overall, poem processing compared to song processing relied on left temporal regions, including the superior temporal gyrus, whereas song processing compared to poem processing recruited more right temporal areas, including Heschl's gyrus and the superior temporal gyrus. PSA values co-varied with activation in bilateral temporal regions for poems, and in right-dominant fronto-temporal regions for songs. Continuous liking ratings were correlated with activity in the default mode network for both poems and songs. The pattern of results suggests that the neural processing of poems and their musical settings is based on their melodic properties, supported by bilateral temporal auditory areas and an additional right fronto-temporal network known to be implicated in the processing of melodies in songs. These findings take a middle ground in providing evidence for specific processing circuits for speech and music in the left and right hemisphere, but simultaneously for shared processing of melodic aspects of both poems and their musical settings in the right temporal cortex. Thus, we demonstrate the neurobiological plausibility of assuming the importance of melodic properties in spoken and sung aesthetic language alike, along with the involvement of the default mode network in the aesthetic appreciation of these properties.
Free gaze and moving images are typically avoided in EEG experiments due to the expected generation of artifacts and noise. Yet for a growing number of research questions, loosening these rigorous restrictions would be beneficial. Among these is research on visual aesthetic experiences, which often involve open-ended exploration of highly variable stimuli. Here we systematically compare the effect of conservative vs. more liberal experimental settings on various measures of behavior, brain activity and physiology in an aesthetic rating task. Our primary aim was to assess EEG signal quality. 43 participants either maintained fixation or were allowed to gaze freely, and viewed either static images or dynamic (video) stimuli consisting of dance performances or nature scenes. A passive auditory background task (auditory steady-state response; ASSR) was added as a proxy measure for overall EEG recording quality. We recorded EEG, ECG and eye tracking data, and participants rated their aesthetic preference and state of boredom on each trial. Whereas both behavioral ratings and gaze behavior were affected by task and stimulus manipulations, EEG SNR was barely affected and generally robust across all conditions, despite only minimal preprocessing and no trial rejection. In particular, we show that using video stimuli does not necessarily result in lower EEG quality and can, on the contrary, significantly reduce eye movements while increasing both the participants’ aesthetic response and general task engagement. We see these as encouraging results indicating that — at least in the lab — more liberal experimental conditions can be adopted without significant loss of signal quality.
When experienced in-person, engagement with art has been associated with positive outcomes in well-being and mental health. However, especially in the last decade, art viewing, cultural engagement, and even ‘trips’ to museums have begun to take place online, via computers, smartphones, tablets, or in virtual reality. Similarly, to what has been reported for in-person visits, online art engagements—easily accessible from personal devices—have also been associated to well-being impacts. However, a broader understanding of for whom and how online-delivered art might have well-being impacts is still lacking. In the present study, we used a Monet interactive art exhibition from Google Arts and Culture to deepen our understanding of the role of pleasure, meaning, and individual differences in the responsiveness to art. Beyond replicating the previous group-level effects, we confirmed our pre-registered hypothesis that trait-level inter-individual differences in aesthetic responsiveness predict some of the benefits that online art viewing has on well-being and further that such inter-individual differences at the trait level were mediated by subjective experiences of pleasure and especially meaningfulness felt during the online-art intervention. The role that participants' experiences play as a possible mechanism during art interventions is discussed in light of recent theoretical models.
In this study, we investigated the impact of two constraints on the linear order of constituents in German preschool children’s and adults’ speech production: a rhythmic (*LAPSE, militating against sequences of unstressed syllables) and a semantic one (ANIM, requiring animate referents to be named before inanimate ones). Participants were asked to produce coordinated bare noun phrases in response to picture stimuli (e.g., Delfin und Planet, ‘dolphin and planet’) without any predefined word order. Overall, children and adults preferably produced animate items before inanimate ones, confirming findings of Prat-Sala, Shillcock, and Sorace (2000). In the group of preschoolers, the strength of the animacy effect correlated positively with age. Furthermore, the order of the conjuncts was affected by the rhythmic constraint, such that disrhythmic sequences, i.e., stress lapses, were avoided. In both groups, the latter result was significant when the two stimulus pictures did not vary with respect to animacy. In sum, our findings suggest a stronger influence of animacy compared to rhythmic well-formedness on conjunct ordering for German speaking children and adults, in line with findings by McDonald, Bock, and Kelly (1993) who investigated English speaking adults.
The ability to extract regularities from the environment is arguably an adaptive characteristic of intelligent systems. In the context of speech, statistical learning is thought to be an important mechanism for language acquisition. By considering individual differences in speech auditory-motor synchronization, an independent component analysis of fMRI data revealed that the neural substrates of statistical word form learning are not fully shared across individuals. While a network of auditory and superior pre/motor regions is universally activated in the process of learning, a fronto-parietal network is instead additionally and selectively engaged by some individuals, boosting their performance. Furthermore, interfering with the use of this network via articulatory suppression (producing irrelevant speech during learning) normalizes performance across the entire sample. Our work provides novel insights on language-related statistical learning and reconciles previous contrasting findings, while highlighting the need to factor in fundamental individual differences for a precise characterization of cognitive phenomena.
Across languages, the speech signal is characterized by a predominant modulation of the amplitude spectrum between about 4.3-5.5Hz, reflecting the production and processing of linguistic information chunks (syllables, words) every ∼200ms. Interestingly, ∼200ms is also the typical duration of eye fixations during reading. Prompted by this observation, we demonstrate that German readers sample written text at ∼5Hz. A subsequent meta-analysis with 142 studies from 14 languages replicates this result, but also shows that sampling frequencies vary across languages between 3.9Hz and 5.2Hz, and that this variation systematically depends on the complexity of the writing systems (character-based vs. alphabetic systems, orthographic transparency). Finally, we demonstrate empirically a positive correlation between speech spectrum and eye-movement sampling in low-skilled readers. Based on this convergent evidence, we propose that during reading, our brain’s linguistic processing systems imprint a preferred processing rate, i.e., the rate of spoken language production and perception, onto the oculomotor system.
Precisely estimating event timing is essential for survival, yet temporal distortions are ubiquitous in our daily sensory experience. Here, we tested whether the relative position, relative duration and relative distance in time of two sequentially-organized events —standard S, with constant duration, and comparison C, varying trial-by-trial— are causal factors in generating temporal distortions. We found that temporal distortions emerge when the first event is shorter than the second event. Importantly, a significant interaction suggests that a longer ISI helps counteracting such serial distortion effect only the constant S is in first position, but not if the unpredictable C is in first position. These results suggest the existence of a perceptual bias in perceiving ordered event durations, mechanistically contributing to distortion in time perception. We simulated our behavioral results with a Bayesian model and replicated the finding that participants disproportionately expand first-position dynamic (unpredictable) short events. Our results clarify the mechanics generating time distortions by identifying a hitherto unknown duration-dependent encoding inefficiency in human serial temporal perception, akin to a strong prior that can be overridden for highly predictable sensory events but unfolds for unpredictable ones.
Research points to neurofunctional differences underlying fluent speech production in stutterers and non-stutterers. There has been considerably less work focusing on the processes that underlie stuttered speech, primarily due to the difficulty of reliably eliciting stuttering in the unnatural contexts associated with neuroimaging experiments. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to test the hypothesis that stuttering events result from global motor inhibition–a “freeze” response typically characterized by increased beta power in nodes of the action-stopping network. We leveraged a novel clinical interview to develop participant-specific stimuli in order to elicit a comparable amount of stuttered and fluent trials. Twenty-nine adult stutterers participated. The paradigm included a cue prior to a go signal, which allowed us to isolate processes associated with stuttered and fluent trials prior to speech initiation. During this pre-speech time window, stuttered trials were associated with greater beta power in the right pre-supplementary motor area, a key node in the action-stopping network, compared to fluent trials. Beta power in the right pre-supplementary area was related to a clinical measure of stuttering severity. We also found that anticipated words identified independently by participants were stuttered more often than those generated by the researchers, which were based on the participants’ reported anticipated sounds. This suggests that global motor inhibition results from stuttering anticipation. This study represents the largest comparison of stuttered and fluent speech to date. The findings provide a foundation for clinical trials that test the efficacy of neuromodulation on stuttering. Moreover, our study demonstrates the feasibility of using our approach for eliciting stuttering during MEG and functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments so that the neurobiological bases of stuttered speech can be further elucidated.
When speech is too fast, the tracking of the acoustic signal along the auditory pathway deteriorates, leading to suboptimal speech segmentation and decoding of speech information. Thus, speech comprehension is limited by the temporal constraints of the auditory system. Here we ask whether individual differences in auditory-motor coupling strength in part shape these temporal constraints. In two behavioural experiments, we characterize individual differences in the comprehension of naturalistic speech as function of the individual synchronization between the auditory and motor systems and the preferred frequencies of the systems. Obviously, speech comprehension declined at higher speech rates. Importantly, however, both higher auditory-motor synchronization and higher spontaneous speech motor production rates were predictive of better speech-comprehension performance. Furthermore, performance increased with higher working memory capacity (digit span) and higher linguistic, model-based sentence predictability—particularly so at higher speech rates and for individuals with high auditory-motor synchronization. The data provide evidence for a model of speech comprehension in which individual flexibility of not only the motor system but also auditory-motor synchronization may play a modulatory role.
When speech is too fast, the tracking of the acoustic signal along the auditory pathway deteriorates, leading to suboptimal speech segmentation and decoding of speech information. Thus, speech comprehension is limited by the temporal constraints of the auditory system. Here we ask whether individual differences in auditory-motor coupling strength in part shape these temporal constraints. In two behavioral experiments, we characterize individual differences in the comprehension of naturalistic speech as function of the individual synchronization between the auditory and motor systems and the preferred frequencies of the systems. Obviously, speech comprehension declined at higher speech rates. Importantly, however, both higher auditory-motor synchronization and higher spontaneous speech motor production rates were predictive of better speech-comprehension performance. Furthermore, performance increased with higher working memory capacity (Digit Span) and higher linguistic, model-based sentence predictability – particularly so at higher speech rates and for individuals with high auditory-motor synchronization. These findings support the notion of an individual preferred auditory– motor regime that allows for optimal speech processing. The data provide evidence for a model that assigns a central role to motor-system-dependent individual flexibility in continuous speech comprehension.
Speech imagery (the ability to generate internally quasi-perceptual experiences of speech) is a fundamental ability linked to cognitive functions such as inner speech, phonological working memory, and predictive processing. Speech imagery is also considered an ideal tool to test theories of overt speech. The study of speech imagery is challenging, primarily because of the absence of overt behavioral output as well as the difficulty in temporally aligning imagery events across trials and individuals. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) paired with temporal-generalization-based neural decoding and a simple behavioral protocol to determine the processing stages underlying speech imagery. We monitored participants’ lip and jaw micromovements during mental imagery of syllable production using electromyography. Decoding participants’ imagined syllables revealed a sequence of task-elicited representations. Importantly, participants’ micromovements did not discriminate between syllables. The decoded sequence of neuronal patterns maps well onto the predictions of current computational models of overt speech motor control and provides evidence for hypothesized internal and external feedback loops for speech planning and production, respectively. Additionally, the results expose the compressed nature of representations during planning which contrasts with the natural rate at which internal productions unfold. We conjecture that the same sequence underlies the motor-based generation of sensory predictions that modulate speech perception as well as the hypothesized articulatory loop of phonological working memory. The results underscore the potential of speech imagery, based on new experimental approaches and analytical methods, and further pave the way for successful non-invasive brain-computer interfaces.
Music, like language, is characterized by hierarchically organized structure that unfolds over time. Music listening therefore requires not only the tracking of notes and beats but also internally constructing high-level musical structures or phrases and anticipating incoming contents. Unlike for language, mechanistic evidence for online musical segmentation and prediction at a structural level is sparse. We recorded neurophysiological data from participants listening to music in its original forms as well as in manipulated versions with locally or globally reversed harmonic structures. We discovered a low-frequency neural component that modulated the neural rhythms of beat tracking and reliably parsed musical phrases. We next identified phrasal phase precession, suggesting that listeners established structural predictions from ongoing listening experience to track phrasal boundaries. The data point to brain mechanisms that listeners use to segment continuous music at the phrasal level and to predict abstract structural features of music.
Background/Objectives: Sharing the bed with a partner is common among adults and impacts sleep quality with potential implications for mental health. However, hitherto findings are contradictory and particularly polysomnographic data on co-sleeping couples are extremely rare. The present study aimed to investigate the effects of a bed partner's presence on individual and dyadic sleep neurophysiology.
Methods: Young healthy heterosexual couples underwent sleep-lab-based polysomnography of two sleeping arrangements: individual sleep and co-sleep. Individual and dyadic sleep parameters (i.e., synchronization of sleep stages) were collected. The latter were assessed using cross-recurrence quantification analysis. Additionally, subjective sleep quality, relationship characteristics, and chronotype were monitored. Data were analyzed comparing co-sleep vs. individual sleep. Interaction effects of the sleeping arrangement with gender, chronotype, or relationship characteristics were moreover tested.
Results: As compared to sleeping individually, co-sleeping was associated with about 10% more REM sleep, less fragmented REM sleep (p = 0.008), longer undisturbed REM fragments (p = 0.0006), and more limb movements (p = 0.007). None of the other sleep stages was significantly altered. Social support interacted with sleeping arrangement in a way that individuals with suboptimal social support showed the biggest impact of the sleeping arrangement on REM sleep. Sleep architectures were more synchronized between partners during co-sleep (p = 0.005) even if wake phases were excluded (p = 0.022). Moreover, sleep architectures are significantly coupled across a lag of ± 5min. Depth of relationship represented an additional significant main effect regarding synchronization, reflecting a positive association between the two. Neither REM sleep nor synchronization was influenced by gender, chronotype, or other relationship characteristics.
Conclusion: Depending on the sleeping arrangement, couple's sleep architecture and synchronization show alterations that are modified by relationship characteristics. We discuss that these alterations could be part of a self-enhancing feedback loop of REM sleep and sociality and a mechanism through which sociality prevents mental illness.
The ability to vocalize is ubiquitous in vertebrates, but neural networks underlying vocal control remain poorly understood. Here, we performed simultaneous neuronal recordings in the frontal cortex and dorsal striatum (caudate nucleus, CN) during the production of echolocation pulses and communication calls in bats. This approach allowed us to assess the general aspects underlying vocal production in mammals and the unique evolutionary adaptations of bat echolocation. Our data indicate that before vocalization, a distinctive change in high-gamma and beta oscillations (50–80 Hz and 12–30 Hz, respectively) takes place in the bat frontal cortex and dorsal striatum. Such precise fine-tuning of neural oscillations could allow animals to selectively activate motor programs required for the production of either echolocation or communication vocalizations. Moreover, the functional coupling between frontal and striatal areas, occurring in the theta oscillatory band (4–8 Hz), differs markedly at the millisecond level, depending on whether the animals are in a navigational mode (that is, emitting echolocation pulses) or in a social communication mode (emitting communication calls). Overall, this study indicates that fronto-striatal oscillations could provide a neural correlate for vocal control in bats.
Speech perception is mediated by both left and right auditory cortices but with differential sensitivity to specific acoustic information contained in the speech signal. A detailed description of this functional asymmetry is missing, and the underlying models are widely debated. We analyzed cortical responses from 96 epilepsy patients with electrode implantation in left or right primary, secondary, and/or association auditory cortex (AAC). We presented short acoustic transients to noninvasively estimate the dynamical properties of multiple functional regions along the auditory cortical hierarchy. We show remarkably similar bimodal spectral response profiles in left and right primary and secondary regions, with evoked activity composed of dynamics in the theta (around 4–8 Hz) and beta–gamma (around 15–40 Hz) ranges. Beyond these first cortical levels of auditory processing, a hemispheric asymmetry emerged, with delta and beta band (3/15 Hz) responsivity prevailing in the right hemisphere and theta and gamma band (6/40 Hz) activity prevailing in the left. This asymmetry is also present during syllables presentation, but the evoked responses in AAC are more heterogeneous, with the co-occurrence of alpha (around 10 Hz) and gamma (>25 Hz) activity bilaterally. These intracranial data provide a more fine-grained and nuanced characterization of cortical auditory processing in the 2 hemispheres, shedding light on the neural dynamics that potentially shape auditory and speech processing at different levels of the cortical hierarchy.
Music listening has become a highly individualized activity with smartphones and music streaming services providing listeners with absolute freedom to listen to any kind of music in any situation. Until now, little has been written about the processes underlying the selection of music in daily life. The present study aimed to disentangle some of the complex processes among the listener, situation, and functions of music listening involved in music selection. Utilizing the experience sampling method, data were collected from 119 participants using a smartphone application. For 10 consecutive days, participants received 14 prompts using stratified-random sampling throughout the day and reported on their music-listening behavior. Statistical learning procedures on multilevel regression models and multilevel structural equation modeling were used to determine the most important predictors and analyze mediation processes between person, situation, functions of listening, and music selection. Results revealed that the features of music selected in daily life were predominantly determined by situational characteristics, whereas consistent individual differences were of minor importance. Functions of music listening were found to act as a mediator between characteristics of the situation and music-selection behavior. We further observed several significant random effects, which indicated that individuals differed in how situational variables affected their music selection behavior. Our findings suggest a need to shift the focus of music-listening research from individual differences to situational influences, including potential person-situation interactions.
To prepare for an impending event of unknown temporal distribution, humans internally increase the perceived probability of event onset as time elapses. This effect is termed the hazard rate of events. We tested how the neural encoding of hazard rate changes by providing human participants with prior information on temporal event probability. We recorded behavioral and electroencephalographic (EEG) data while participants listened to continuously repeating five-tone sequences, composed of four standard tones followed by a non-target deviant tone, delivered at slow (1.6 Hz) or fast (4 Hz) rates. The task was to detect a rare target tone, which equiprobably appeared at either position two, three or four of the repeating sequence. In this design, potential target position acts as a proxy for elapsed time. For participants uninformed about the target’s distribution, elapsed time to uncertain target onset increased response speed, displaying a significant hazard rate effect at both slow and fast stimulus rates. However, only in fast sequences did prior information about the target’s temporal distribution interact with elapsed time, suppressing the hazard rate. Importantly, in the fast, uninformed condition pre-stimulus power synchronization in the beta band (Beta 1, 15–19 Hz) predicted the hazard rate of response times. Prior information suppressed pre-stimulus power synchronization in the same band, while still significantly predicting response times. We conclude that Beta 1 power does not simply encode the hazard rate, but—more generally—internal estimates of temporal event probability based upon contextual information.
The lateralization of neuronal processing underpinning hearing, speech, language, and music is widely studied, vigorously debated, and still not understood in a satisfactory manner. One set of hypotheses focuses on the temporal structure of perceptual experience and links auditory cortex asymmetries to underlying differences in neural populations with differential temporal sensitivity (e.g., ideas advanced by Zatorre et al. (2002) and Poeppel (2003). The Asymmetric Sampling in Time theory (AST) (Poeppel, 2003), builds on cytoarchitectonic differences between auditory cortices and predicts that modulation frequencies within the range of, roughly, the syllable rate, are more accurately tracked by the right hemisphere. To date, this conjecture is reasonably well supported, since – while there is some heterogeneity in the reported findings – the predicted asymmetrical entrainment has been observed in various experimental protocols. Here, we show that under specific processing demands, the rightward dominance disappears. We propose an enriched and modified version of the asymmetric sampling hypothesis in the context of speech. Recent work (Rimmele et al., 2018b) proposes two different mechanisms to underlie the auditory tracking of the speech envelope: one derived from the intrinsic oscillatory properties of auditory regions; the other induced by top-down signals coming from other non-auditory regions of the brain. We propose that under non-speech listening conditions, the intrinsic auditory mechanism dominates and thus, in line with AST, entrainment is rightward lateralized, as is widely observed. However, (i) depending on individual brain structural/functional differences, and/or (ii) in the context of specific speech listening conditions, the relative weight of the top-down mechanism can increase. In this scenario, the typically observed auditory sampling asymmetry (and its rightward dominance) diminishes or vanishes.
Talking about emotion and sharing emotional experiences is a key component of human interaction. Specifically, individuals often consider the reactions of other people when evaluating the meaning and impact of an emotional stimulus. It has not yet been investigated, however, how emotional arousal ratings and physiological responses elicited by affective stimuli are influenced by the rating of an interaction partner. In the present study, pairs of participants were asked to rate and communicate the degree of their emotional arousal while viewing affective pictures. Strikingly, participants adjusted their arousal ratings to match up with their interaction partner. In anticipation of the affective picture, the interaction partner’s arousal ratings correlated positively with activity in anterior insula and prefrontal cortex. During picture presentation, social influence was reflected in the ventral striatum, that is, activity in the ventral striatum correlated negatively with the interaction partner’s ratings. Results of the study show that emotional alignment through the influence of another person’s communicated experience has to be considered as a complex phenomenon integrating different components including emotion anticipation and conformity.