Dataset Information

Effects of musical training and event probabilities on encoding of complex tone patterns.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The human auditory cortex automatically encodes acoustic input from the environment and differentiates regular sound patterns from deviant ones in order to identify important, irregular events. The Mismatch Negativity (MMN) response is a neuronal marker for the detection of sounds that are unexpected, based on the encoded regularities. It is also elicited by violations of more complex regularities and musical expertise has been shown to have an effect on the processing of complex regularities. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we investigated the MMN response to salient or less salient deviants by varying the standard probability (70%, 50% and 35%) of a pattern oddball paradigm. To study the effects of musical expertise in the encoding of the patterns, we compared the responses of a group of non-musicians to those of musicians.

Results

We observed significant MMN in all conditions, including the least salient condition (35% standards), in response to violations of the predominant tone pattern for both groups. The amplitude of MMN from the right hemisphere was influenced by the standard probability. This effect was modulated by long-term musical training: standard probability changes influenced MMN amplitude in the group of non-musicians only.

Conclusion

This study indicates that pattern violations are detected automatically, even if they are of very low salience, both in non-musicians and musicians, with salience having a stronger impact on processing in the right hemisphere of non-musicians. Long-term musical training influences this encoding, in that non-musicians benefit to a greater extent from a good signal-to-noise ratio (i.e. high probability of the standard pattern), while musicians are less dependent on the salience of an acoustic environment.

SUBMITTER: Kuchenbuch A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3639196 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Effects of musical training and event probabilities on encoding of complex tone patterns.

Kuchenbuch Anja A Paraskevopoulos Evangelos E Herholz Sibylle C SC Pantev Christo C

BMC neuroscience 20130424

<h4>Background</h4>The human auditory cortex automatically encodes acoustic input from the environment and differentiates regular sound patterns from deviant ones in order to identify important, irregular events. The Mismatch Negativity (MMN) response is a neuronal marker for the detection of sounds that are unexpected, based on the encoded regularities. It is also elicited by violations of more complex regularities and musical expertise has been shown to have an effect on the processing of comp ...[more]

PMID: 23617597

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Project description:BackgroundTone languages such as Thai and Mandarin Chinese use differences in fundamental frequency (F0, pitch) to distinguish lexical meaning. Previous behavioral studies have shown that native speakers of a non-tone language have difficulty discriminating among tone contrasts and are sensitive to different F0 dimensions than speakers of a tone language. The aim of the present ERP study was to investigate the effect of language background and training on the non-attentive processing of lexical tones. EEG was recorded from 12 adult native speakers of Mandarin Chinese, 12 native speakers of American English, and 11 Thai speakers while they were watching a movie and were presented with multiple tokens of low-falling, mid-level and high-rising Thai lexical tones. High-rising or low-falling tokens were presented as deviants among mid-level standard tokens, and vice versa. EEG data and data from a behavioral discrimination task were collected before and after a two-day perceptual categorization training task.ResultsBehavioral discrimination improved after training in both the Chinese and the English groups. Low-falling tone deviants versus standards elicited a mismatch negativity (MMN) in all language groups. Before, but not after training, the English speakers showed a larger MMN compared to the Chinese, even though English speakers performed worst in the behavioral tasks. The MMN was followed by a late negativity, which became smaller with improved discrimination. The High-rising deviants versus standards elicited a late negativity, which was left-lateralized only in the English and Chinese groups.ConclusionResults showed that native speakers of English, Chinese and Thai recruited largely similar mechanisms when non-attentively processing Thai lexical tones. However, native Thai speakers differed from the Chinese and English speakers with respect to the processing of late F0 contour differences (high-rising versus mid-level tones). In addition, native speakers of a non-tone language (English) were initially more sensitive to F0 onset differences (low-falling versus mid-level contrast), which was suppressed as a result of training. This result converges with results from previous behavioral studies and supports the view that attentive as well as non-attentive processing of F0 contrasts is affected by language background, but is malleable even in adult learners.

Project description:Perception of a regular beat in music is inferred from different types of accents. For example, increases in loudness cause intensity accents, and the grouping of time intervals in a rhythm creates temporal accents. Accents are expected to occur on the beat: when accents are "missing" on the beat, the beat is more difficult to find. However, it is unclear whether accents occurring off the beat alter beat perception similarly to missing accents on the beat. Moreover, no one has examined whether intensity accents influence beat perception more or less strongly than temporal accents, nor how musical expertise affects sensitivity to each type of accent. In two experiments, we obtained ratings of difficulty in finding the beat in rhythms with either temporal or intensity accents, and which varied in the number of accents on the beat as well as the number of accents off the beat. In both experiments, the occurrence of accents on the beat facilitated beat detection more in musical experts than in musical novices. In addition, the number of accents on the beat affected beat finding more in rhythms with temporal accents than in rhythms with intensity accents. The effect of accents off the beat was much weaker than the effect of accents on the beat and appeared to depend on musical expertise, as well as on the number of accents on the beat: when many accents on the beat are missing, beat perception is quite difficult, and adding accents off the beat may not reduce beat perception further. Overall, the different types of accents were processed qualitatively differently, depending on musical expertise. Therefore, these findings indicate the importance of designing ecologically valid stimuli when testing beat perception in musical novices, who may need different types of accent information than musical experts to be able to find a beat. Furthermore, our findings stress the importance of carefully designing rhythms for social and clinical applications of beat perception, as not all listeners treat all rhythms alike.

Dataset Information

Effects of musical training and event probabilities on encoding of complex tone patterns.

Background

Results

Conclusion

Publications

Effects of musical training and event probabilities on encoding of complex tone patterns.

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