This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Background. Growing evidence for overlap in the syntactic processing of language and music in non... more Background. Growing evidence for overlap in the syntactic processing of language and music in non-brain-damaged individuals leads to the question of whether aphasic individuals with grammatical comprehension problems in language also have problems processing structural relations in music. Aims. The current study sought to test musical syntactic processing in individuals with Broca's aphasia and grammatical comprehension deficits, using both explicit and implicit tasks. Methods and Procedures. Two experiments were conducted. In the first experiment, 12 individuals with Broca's aphasia (and 14 matched controls) were tested for their sensitivity to grammatical and semantic relations in sentences, and for their sensitivity to musical syntactic (harmonic) relations in chord sequences. An explicit task (acceptability judgment of novel sequences) was used. The second experiment, with 9 individuals with Broca's aphasia (and 12 matched controls), probed musical syntactic processing using an implicit task (harmonic priming). In both experiments, the aphasic group showed impaired processing of musical syntactic relations. Control experiments indicated that this could not be attributed to low-level problems with the perception of pitch patterns or with auditory short term memory for tones. Conclusions. The results suggest that musical syntactic processing in agrammatic aphasia deserves systematic investigation, and that such studies could help probe the nature of the processing deficits underlying linguistic agrammatism. Methodological suggestions are offered for future work in this little-explored area.
medRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), Oct 24, 2022
Iron is an important element required for the body to function properly; however, hemochromatosis... more Iron is an important element required for the body to function properly; however, hemochromatosis, an excess of iron in healthy tissue, can lead to cell damage. C282Y is a genetic variant prevalent in European populations, which is known to increase iron levels in the body and is responsible for most hemochromatosis cases. Recent work from our group analyzing brain Magnetic Resonance (MR) images established, in a large sample of older adults, that individuals who were homozygous for C282Y showed evidence consistent with substantial iron deposition localized to brain regions related to the motor system. These individuals also had nearly twofold increased risk for developing movement disorders, like Parkinson's Disease (PD). Here, we describe the broader polygenic architecture of this novel endophenotype-the "hemochromatosis brain." This multivariate MRI phenotype captures average brain-wide differences of C282Y homozygote individuals and may reflect consequences of iron deposition localized to motor circuits. To do this we trained a classifier in a sample of 960 individuals from the UKBiobank to distinguish C282Y homozygotes from other genotypes using phenotypes derived from MR images sensitive to iron. This classifier was then applied to an independent set of 35,283 individuals for which MRI were available in the UKBiobank. This generated, for each individual, a PolyVoxel Score (PVS) that captures variation in MRI phenotypes associated previously with C282Y homozygosity and may reflect the degree of brain-specific iron deposition or other disease mechanisms. In this independent set we showed the PVS significantly predicted risk for PD (OR=1.37, p=0.0089). Studying the genetics of the "hemochromatosis brain" we conducted a GWAS on the PVS to show it to be highly heritable (ℎ 2 =0.381, SE=0.033) with 43 genome-wide significant loci. Many of these signals are proximal to genes known to be involved in iron homeostasis (TF, rs6794370, p=2.43x10-81 ; HFE rs1800562, p=6.93x10-75 ; TMPRSS6, rs2413450, p=2.52x10-50). Discovered genomic variants overlapped with previous GWAS studies of iron/red blood cells, non-iron blood markers and brain and cognitive traits. Cell type enrichment implicated glial cells to be the principal cell class related to the PVS GWAS signal, in line with previous work finding that these cells to have the highest iron concentrations in the brain. Finally, tissue-specific analysis identified the substantia nigra and hippocampus to have enriched epigenetic markers to our GWAS findings. We have made available a python program to generate the PVS from MRI scans. In conclusion, we have shown that the multivariate MRI phenotype associated with C282Y homozygosity is, in fact, highly heritable, polygenic, and represents a novel brain endophenotype of PD. Our unique approach of combining classical forward and reverse genetics approaches to define and describe potentially disease mediating endophenotypes could be applied more broadly to other clinically relevant disorders.
Quantification of dynamic causal interactions among brain regions constitutes an important compon... more Quantification of dynamic causal interactions among brain regions constitutes an important component of conducting research and developing applications in experimental and translational neuroscience. Furthermore, cortical networks with dynamic causal connectivity in brain-computer interface (BCI) applications offer a more comprehensive view of brain states implicated in behavior than do individual brain regions. However, models of cortical network dynamics are difficult to generalize across subjects because current electroencephalography (EEG) signal analysis techniques are limited in their ability to reliably localize sources across subjects. We propose an algorithmic and computational framework for identifying cortical networks across subjects in which dynamic causal connectivity is modeled among user-selected cortical regions of interest (ROIs). We demonstrate the strength of the proposed framework using a "reach/saccade to spatial target" cognitive task performed by 10 right-handed individuals. Modeling of causal cortical interactions was accomplished through measurement of cortical activity using (EEG), application of independent component clustering to identify cortical ROIs as network nodes, estimation of cortical current density using cortically constrained low resolution electromagnetic brain tomography (cLORETA), multivariate autoregressive (MVAR) modeling of representative cortical activity signals from each ROI, and quantification of the dynamic causal interaction among the identified ROIs using the Short-time direct Directed Transfer function (SdDTF). The resulting cortical network and the computed causal dynamics among its nodes exhibited physiologically plausible behavior, consistent with past results reported in the literature. This physiological plausibility of the results strengthens the framework's applicability in reliably capturing complex brain functionality, which is required by applications, such as diagnostics and BCI.
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), Jun 6, 2021
During late childhood behavioral changes, such as increased risk-taking and emotional reactivity,... more During late childhood behavioral changes, such as increased risk-taking and emotional reactivity, have been associated with the maturation of cortico-subcortical circuits. Understanding microstructural changes in subcortical regions may aid our understanding of how individual differences in these behaviors emerge. Restriction spectrum imaging (RSI) is a framework for modelling diffusion-weighted imaging that decomposes the diffusion signal from a voxel into hindered and restricted compartments. This yields greater specificity than conventional methods of characterizing intracellular diffusion. Using RSI, we modelled voxelwise restricted isotropic, N0, and anisotropic, ND, diffusion across the brain and measured cross-sectional and longitudinal age associations in a large sample (n=8,039) from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) study aged 9-13 years. Older participants had higher N0 and ND across subcortical regions. The largest associations for N0 were within the basal ganglia and for ND within the ventral diencephalon. Importantly, age associations varied with respect to the internal cytoarchitecture within subcortical structures, for example age associations differed across thalamic nuclei. This suggests that developmental effects may map onto specific cell populations or circuits and highlights the utility of voxelwise compared to ROI-wise analyses. Future analyses will aim to understand the relevance of this subcortical microstructural developmental for behavioral outcomes.
Music is known to be a powerful elicitor of emotions. Here, we examined the possibility of decodi... more Music is known to be a powerful elicitor of emotions. Here, we examined the possibility of decoding musicinduced experienced emotions – affective responses induced in the listener by music stimuli – using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data collected while participants listened to various movie soundtrack excerpts. Using a machine learning based classification framework, preliminary results indicate that it is possible to, under certain conditions, decode the arousal (High/Low) and valence (Positive/Negative) of the emotional state experienced during listening. Future work will be aimed at improving methodological issues in order to establish whether these results extend to larger populations and more general types of music stimuli.
Animals, including fish, birds, rodents, non-human primates, and pre-verbal infants are able to d... more Animals, including fish, birds, rodents, non-human primates, and pre-verbal infants are able to discriminate the duration and number of events without the use of language. In this paper, we present the results of six experiments exploring the capability of adult rats to count-sequentially presented white-noise stimuli. The investigation focuses on the animal's ability to exhibit spontaneous subtraction following the presentation of novel stimulus inversions in the auditory signals being counted. Results suggest that a subtraction operation between two opposite sensory representations may be a general processing strategy used for the comparison of stimulus magnitudes. These findings are discussed within the context of a mode-control model of timing and counting that relies on an analog temporal-integration process for the addition and subtraction of sequential events.
visual recognition of objects and scenes. Thus, learning about faces involves several different l... more visual recognition of objects and scenes. Thus, learning about faces involves several different learning tasks made even harder by the fact that they operate with the same input and are thus subject to interference effects.
Many internal mental processes, including emotional experience, attention, and workload are diffi... more Many internal mental processes, including emotional experience, attention, and workload are difficult to measure because they are not well defined by distinct behavioral events. Our research investigates the underlying modulatory processes that influence perception during multitask processing. We Focus specifically on neural processes responsible for 'inattentional deafness,' the tendency for individuals to miss clearly audible alarms under a complex multitask situation such as piloting of an airplane (Callan et al, 2018; Durantin et al, 2017). Such inattentional deafness has been found to be responsible for many aviation accidents. In this study we utilize a technique applying multiple levels of independent component analysis (ICA) to EEG recordings to extract independent modulators of neural activity potentially related to attention and workload. Independent modulators (IMs) are presumed dynamic processes co-modulating spectral activity within various brain networks (Onton & Makeig, 2009; Chuang, et al, 2012). Machine learning (ML) using sparse logistic regression (SLR) was used over pre-stimulus IM activity to predict detection of the audio alarm. Additional correlation analyses between the IMs and various flight parameters were used to determine IM relationships with the piloting task.
Humans have the ability to flexibly synchronize motor output with sensory input, such as when dan... more Humans have the ability to flexibly synchronize motor output with sensory input, such as when dancing, performing, walking in step with a partner, or just tapping a foot along with music. The study of these behaviors, collectively called sensory-motor synchronization (SMS) offers an important window into human timing behavior and the neural mechanisms that support it. The study of SMS also provides insight into how the brain actively shapes our perception, general cognitive functions and our cultural social identity as humans. In this brief review, we will place SMS into a larger conceptual framework and highlight a rapidly expanding body of recent research.
medRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), Aug 24, 2021
doi: medRxiv preprint NOTE: This preprint reports new research that has not been certified by pee... more doi: medRxiv preprint NOTE: This preprint reports new research that has not been certified by peer review and should not be used to guide clinical practice.
Page 1. MUSICAL SYNTACTIC PROCESSING IN BROCAS APHASIA: A PRELIMINARY STUDY Aniruddh D. Patel1, J... more Page 1. MUSICAL SYNTACTIC PROCESSING IN BROCAS APHASIA: A PRELIMINARY STUDY Aniruddh D. Patel1, John R. Iversen1, and Peter Hagoort2 1The Neurosciences Institute, San Diego, CA 2F.C. Donders Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging, University of Nijmegen ...
Full-body motion capture is essential for the study of body movement. Video-based, markerless, mo... more Full-body motion capture is essential for the study of body movement. Video-based, markerless, mocap systems are, in some cases, replacing marker-based systems, but hybrid systems are less explored. We develop methods for coregistration between 2D video and 3D marker positions when precise spatial relationships are not known a priori. We illustrate these methods on three-ball cascade juggling in which it was not possible to use marker-based tracking of the balls, and no tracking of the hands was possible due to occlusion. Using recorded video and motion capture, we aimed to transform 2D ball coordinates into 3D body space as well as recover details of hand motion. We proposed four linear coregistration methods that differ in how they optimize ball-motion constraints during hold and flight phases, using an initial estimate of hand position based on arm and wrist markers. We found that minimizing the error between ball and hand estimate was globally suboptimal, distorting ball flight ...
The neuroscience of music and music-based interventions (MBIs) is a fascinating but challenging r... more The neuroscience of music and music-based interventions (MBIs) is a fascinating but challenging research field. While music is a ubiquitous component of every human society, MBIs may encompass listening to music, performing music, music-based movement, undergoing music education and training, or receiving treatment from music therapists. Unraveling the brain circuits activated and influenced by MBIs may help us gain better understanding of the therapeutic and educational values of MBIs by gathering strong research evidence. However, the complexity and variety of MBIs impose unique research challenges. This article reviews the recent endeavor led by the National Institutes of Health to support evidence-based research of MBIs and their impact on health and diseases. It also highlights fundamental challenges and strategies of MBI research with emphases on the utilization of animal models, human brain imaging and stimulation technologies, behavior and motion capturing tools, and computa...
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Background. Growing evidence for overlap in the syntactic processing of language and music in non... more Background. Growing evidence for overlap in the syntactic processing of language and music in non-brain-damaged individuals leads to the question of whether aphasic individuals with grammatical comprehension problems in language also have problems processing structural relations in music. Aims. The current study sought to test musical syntactic processing in individuals with Broca's aphasia and grammatical comprehension deficits, using both explicit and implicit tasks. Methods and Procedures. Two experiments were conducted. In the first experiment, 12 individuals with Broca's aphasia (and 14 matched controls) were tested for their sensitivity to grammatical and semantic relations in sentences, and for their sensitivity to musical syntactic (harmonic) relations in chord sequences. An explicit task (acceptability judgment of novel sequences) was used. The second experiment, with 9 individuals with Broca's aphasia (and 12 matched controls), probed musical syntactic processing using an implicit task (harmonic priming). In both experiments, the aphasic group showed impaired processing of musical syntactic relations. Control experiments indicated that this could not be attributed to low-level problems with the perception of pitch patterns or with auditory short term memory for tones. Conclusions. The results suggest that musical syntactic processing in agrammatic aphasia deserves systematic investigation, and that such studies could help probe the nature of the processing deficits underlying linguistic agrammatism. Methodological suggestions are offered for future work in this little-explored area.
medRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), Oct 24, 2022
Iron is an important element required for the body to function properly; however, hemochromatosis... more Iron is an important element required for the body to function properly; however, hemochromatosis, an excess of iron in healthy tissue, can lead to cell damage. C282Y is a genetic variant prevalent in European populations, which is known to increase iron levels in the body and is responsible for most hemochromatosis cases. Recent work from our group analyzing brain Magnetic Resonance (MR) images established, in a large sample of older adults, that individuals who were homozygous for C282Y showed evidence consistent with substantial iron deposition localized to brain regions related to the motor system. These individuals also had nearly twofold increased risk for developing movement disorders, like Parkinson's Disease (PD). Here, we describe the broader polygenic architecture of this novel endophenotype-the "hemochromatosis brain." This multivariate MRI phenotype captures average brain-wide differences of C282Y homozygote individuals and may reflect consequences of iron deposition localized to motor circuits. To do this we trained a classifier in a sample of 960 individuals from the UKBiobank to distinguish C282Y homozygotes from other genotypes using phenotypes derived from MR images sensitive to iron. This classifier was then applied to an independent set of 35,283 individuals for which MRI were available in the UKBiobank. This generated, for each individual, a PolyVoxel Score (PVS) that captures variation in MRI phenotypes associated previously with C282Y homozygosity and may reflect the degree of brain-specific iron deposition or other disease mechanisms. In this independent set we showed the PVS significantly predicted risk for PD (OR=1.37, p=0.0089). Studying the genetics of the "hemochromatosis brain" we conducted a GWAS on the PVS to show it to be highly heritable (ℎ 2 =0.381, SE=0.033) with 43 genome-wide significant loci. Many of these signals are proximal to genes known to be involved in iron homeostasis (TF, rs6794370, p=2.43x10-81 ; HFE rs1800562, p=6.93x10-75 ; TMPRSS6, rs2413450, p=2.52x10-50). Discovered genomic variants overlapped with previous GWAS studies of iron/red blood cells, non-iron blood markers and brain and cognitive traits. Cell type enrichment implicated glial cells to be the principal cell class related to the PVS GWAS signal, in line with previous work finding that these cells to have the highest iron concentrations in the brain. Finally, tissue-specific analysis identified the substantia nigra and hippocampus to have enriched epigenetic markers to our GWAS findings. We have made available a python program to generate the PVS from MRI scans. In conclusion, we have shown that the multivariate MRI phenotype associated with C282Y homozygosity is, in fact, highly heritable, polygenic, and represents a novel brain endophenotype of PD. Our unique approach of combining classical forward and reverse genetics approaches to define and describe potentially disease mediating endophenotypes could be applied more broadly to other clinically relevant disorders.
Quantification of dynamic causal interactions among brain regions constitutes an important compon... more Quantification of dynamic causal interactions among brain regions constitutes an important component of conducting research and developing applications in experimental and translational neuroscience. Furthermore, cortical networks with dynamic causal connectivity in brain-computer interface (BCI) applications offer a more comprehensive view of brain states implicated in behavior than do individual brain regions. However, models of cortical network dynamics are difficult to generalize across subjects because current electroencephalography (EEG) signal analysis techniques are limited in their ability to reliably localize sources across subjects. We propose an algorithmic and computational framework for identifying cortical networks across subjects in which dynamic causal connectivity is modeled among user-selected cortical regions of interest (ROIs). We demonstrate the strength of the proposed framework using a "reach/saccade to spatial target" cognitive task performed by 10 right-handed individuals. Modeling of causal cortical interactions was accomplished through measurement of cortical activity using (EEG), application of independent component clustering to identify cortical ROIs as network nodes, estimation of cortical current density using cortically constrained low resolution electromagnetic brain tomography (cLORETA), multivariate autoregressive (MVAR) modeling of representative cortical activity signals from each ROI, and quantification of the dynamic causal interaction among the identified ROIs using the Short-time direct Directed Transfer function (SdDTF). The resulting cortical network and the computed causal dynamics among its nodes exhibited physiologically plausible behavior, consistent with past results reported in the literature. This physiological plausibility of the results strengthens the framework's applicability in reliably capturing complex brain functionality, which is required by applications, such as diagnostics and BCI.
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), Jun 6, 2021
During late childhood behavioral changes, such as increased risk-taking and emotional reactivity,... more During late childhood behavioral changes, such as increased risk-taking and emotional reactivity, have been associated with the maturation of cortico-subcortical circuits. Understanding microstructural changes in subcortical regions may aid our understanding of how individual differences in these behaviors emerge. Restriction spectrum imaging (RSI) is a framework for modelling diffusion-weighted imaging that decomposes the diffusion signal from a voxel into hindered and restricted compartments. This yields greater specificity than conventional methods of characterizing intracellular diffusion. Using RSI, we modelled voxelwise restricted isotropic, N0, and anisotropic, ND, diffusion across the brain and measured cross-sectional and longitudinal age associations in a large sample (n=8,039) from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) study aged 9-13 years. Older participants had higher N0 and ND across subcortical regions. The largest associations for N0 were within the basal ganglia and for ND within the ventral diencephalon. Importantly, age associations varied with respect to the internal cytoarchitecture within subcortical structures, for example age associations differed across thalamic nuclei. This suggests that developmental effects may map onto specific cell populations or circuits and highlights the utility of voxelwise compared to ROI-wise analyses. Future analyses will aim to understand the relevance of this subcortical microstructural developmental for behavioral outcomes.
Music is known to be a powerful elicitor of emotions. Here, we examined the possibility of decodi... more Music is known to be a powerful elicitor of emotions. Here, we examined the possibility of decoding musicinduced experienced emotions – affective responses induced in the listener by music stimuli – using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data collected while participants listened to various movie soundtrack excerpts. Using a machine learning based classification framework, preliminary results indicate that it is possible to, under certain conditions, decode the arousal (High/Low) and valence (Positive/Negative) of the emotional state experienced during listening. Future work will be aimed at improving methodological issues in order to establish whether these results extend to larger populations and more general types of music stimuli.
Animals, including fish, birds, rodents, non-human primates, and pre-verbal infants are able to d... more Animals, including fish, birds, rodents, non-human primates, and pre-verbal infants are able to discriminate the duration and number of events without the use of language. In this paper, we present the results of six experiments exploring the capability of adult rats to count-sequentially presented white-noise stimuli. The investigation focuses on the animal's ability to exhibit spontaneous subtraction following the presentation of novel stimulus inversions in the auditory signals being counted. Results suggest that a subtraction operation between two opposite sensory representations may be a general processing strategy used for the comparison of stimulus magnitudes. These findings are discussed within the context of a mode-control model of timing and counting that relies on an analog temporal-integration process for the addition and subtraction of sequential events.
visual recognition of objects and scenes. Thus, learning about faces involves several different l... more visual recognition of objects and scenes. Thus, learning about faces involves several different learning tasks made even harder by the fact that they operate with the same input and are thus subject to interference effects.
Many internal mental processes, including emotional experience, attention, and workload are diffi... more Many internal mental processes, including emotional experience, attention, and workload are difficult to measure because they are not well defined by distinct behavioral events. Our research investigates the underlying modulatory processes that influence perception during multitask processing. We Focus specifically on neural processes responsible for 'inattentional deafness,' the tendency for individuals to miss clearly audible alarms under a complex multitask situation such as piloting of an airplane (Callan et al, 2018; Durantin et al, 2017). Such inattentional deafness has been found to be responsible for many aviation accidents. In this study we utilize a technique applying multiple levels of independent component analysis (ICA) to EEG recordings to extract independent modulators of neural activity potentially related to attention and workload. Independent modulators (IMs) are presumed dynamic processes co-modulating spectral activity within various brain networks (Onton & Makeig, 2009; Chuang, et al, 2012). Machine learning (ML) using sparse logistic regression (SLR) was used over pre-stimulus IM activity to predict detection of the audio alarm. Additional correlation analyses between the IMs and various flight parameters were used to determine IM relationships with the piloting task.
Humans have the ability to flexibly synchronize motor output with sensory input, such as when dan... more Humans have the ability to flexibly synchronize motor output with sensory input, such as when dancing, performing, walking in step with a partner, or just tapping a foot along with music. The study of these behaviors, collectively called sensory-motor synchronization (SMS) offers an important window into human timing behavior and the neural mechanisms that support it. The study of SMS also provides insight into how the brain actively shapes our perception, general cognitive functions and our cultural social identity as humans. In this brief review, we will place SMS into a larger conceptual framework and highlight a rapidly expanding body of recent research.
medRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), Aug 24, 2021
doi: medRxiv preprint NOTE: This preprint reports new research that has not been certified by pee... more doi: medRxiv preprint NOTE: This preprint reports new research that has not been certified by peer review and should not be used to guide clinical practice.
Page 1. MUSICAL SYNTACTIC PROCESSING IN BROCAS APHASIA: A PRELIMINARY STUDY Aniruddh D. Patel1, J... more Page 1. MUSICAL SYNTACTIC PROCESSING IN BROCAS APHASIA: A PRELIMINARY STUDY Aniruddh D. Patel1, John R. Iversen1, and Peter Hagoort2 1The Neurosciences Institute, San Diego, CA 2F.C. Donders Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging, University of Nijmegen ...
Full-body motion capture is essential for the study of body movement. Video-based, markerless, mo... more Full-body motion capture is essential for the study of body movement. Video-based, markerless, mocap systems are, in some cases, replacing marker-based systems, but hybrid systems are less explored. We develop methods for coregistration between 2D video and 3D marker positions when precise spatial relationships are not known a priori. We illustrate these methods on three-ball cascade juggling in which it was not possible to use marker-based tracking of the balls, and no tracking of the hands was possible due to occlusion. Using recorded video and motion capture, we aimed to transform 2D ball coordinates into 3D body space as well as recover details of hand motion. We proposed four linear coregistration methods that differ in how they optimize ball-motion constraints during hold and flight phases, using an initial estimate of hand position based on arm and wrist markers. We found that minimizing the error between ball and hand estimate was globally suboptimal, distorting ball flight ...
The neuroscience of music and music-based interventions (MBIs) is a fascinating but challenging r... more The neuroscience of music and music-based interventions (MBIs) is a fascinating but challenging research field. While music is a ubiquitous component of every human society, MBIs may encompass listening to music, performing music, music-based movement, undergoing music education and training, or receiving treatment from music therapists. Unraveling the brain circuits activated and influenced by MBIs may help us gain better understanding of the therapeutic and educational values of MBIs by gathering strong research evidence. However, the complexity and variety of MBIs impose unique research challenges. This article reviews the recent endeavor led by the National Institutes of Health to support evidence-based research of MBIs and their impact on health and diseases. It also highlights fundamental challenges and strategies of MBI research with emphases on the utilization of animal models, human brain imaging and stimulation technologies, behavior and motion capturing tools, and computa...
MANY FOUNDATIONAL QUESTIONS IN THE psychology of music require cross-cultural approaches, yet the... more MANY FOUNDATIONAL QUESTIONS IN THE psychology of music require cross-cultural approaches, yet the vast majority of work in the field to date has been conducted with Western participants and Western music. For cross-cultural research to thrive, it will require collaboration between people from different disciplinary backgrounds, as well as strategies for overcoming differences in assumptions, methods, and terminology. This position paper surveys the current state of the field and offers a number of concrete recommendations focused on issues involving ethics, empirical methods, and definitions of ''music'' and ''culture.''
International Conference for Music Perception and Cognition, 2017
Numerous studies have shown correlations between basic rhythmic synchronization ability and other... more Numerous studies have shown correlations between basic rhythmic synchronization ability and other cognitive measures (1-2). Perception of musical beat in complex rhythms can be more difficult than simple synchronization (3), as it involves the maintenance of an internal pulse often in the face of rhythmically distracting or seemingly contradictory cues (4). Training of beat perception and synchronization thus is expected to involve training of brain mechanisms enabling attention to internal states and suppression of responding to distracting external events. Might this ability have more general cognitive benefits? Aim 1: Develop an effective measure of beat perception and production across subjects of widely varying music abilities. Aim 2: Develop a beat perception training paradigm and test whether it improves performance in beat finding. Aim 3: Find brain EEG markers for finding and losing the beat. Might these be more effective than performance measures alone in driving performance improvement during training (e.g., if they could signal in advance that the participant is losing the beat, allowing delivery of reinforcing cues)? The Beat Expertise Adaptive Test (BEAT) Establishes a beat subjects must synchronize to and maintain via tapping. As test advances, its rhythms have increasing syncopation and complexity. There are two tempo changes (+/-20% around mean of 800ms IBI) at random points in the sequence. of 55 rhythms. Adaptive to subject performance: Strict performance criterion: any asynchrony > 100 ms (⅛ IBI) causes same rhythm to repeat. Three trials of failed synchronization will demonstrate the beat again and will then move back to simpler rhythms. Conclusions Aim 1: The BEAT test appears to be a promising assessment of a subject's ability to perceive and synchronize to a beat more or less hidden in complex rhythmic sequences. It is sensitive, measuring a wide range of beat perception ability, and challenging, making it difficult for most participants to reach perfect performance. Aim 2: Most subjects showed marked improvement on the test after beat training. Improvements were largest in Max Rhythm attained. Two of the eight participants performed poorly after training and appeared to lose interest in the task. Aim 3: At least one independent component source localized to the central posterior brain region shows marked qualitative difference in sound-locked ERP morphology between Good vs Bad beat taps, with beat (and tap) locked entrainment during successful beat tapping and an increase in alpha during periods of poor performance.
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