Dataset Information

Neuroarchitecture of verbal and tonal working memory in nonmusicians and musicians.

ABSTRACT: Working memory (WM) for auditory information has been thought of as a unitary system, but whether WM for verbal and tonal information relies on the same or different functional neuroarchitectures has remained unknown. This fMRI study examines verbal and tonal WM in both nonmusicians (who are trained in speech, but not in music) and highly trained musicians (who are trained in both domains). The data show that core structures of WM are involved in both tonal and verbal WM (Broca's area, premotor cortex, pre-SMA/SMA, left insular cortex, inferior parietal lobe), although with significantly different structural weightings, in both nonmusicians and musicians. Additionally, musicians activated specific subcomponents only during verbal (right insular cortex) or only during tonal WM (right globus pallidus, right caudate nucleus, and left cerebellum). These results reveal the existence of two WM systems in musicians: A phonological loop supporting rehearsal of phonological information, and a tonal loop supporting rehearsal of tonal information. Differences between groups for tonal WM, and between verbal and tonal WM within musicians, were mainly related to structures involved in controlling, programming and planning of actions, thus presumably reflecting differences in action-related sensorimotor coding of verbal and tonal information.

SUBMITTER: Schulze K

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6870416 | biostudies-literature | 2011 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Neuroarchitecture of verbal and tonal working memory in nonmusicians and musicians.

Schulze Katrin K Zysset Stefan S Mueller Karsten K Friederici Angela D AD Koelsch Stefan S

Human brain mapping 20110501 5

Working memory (WM) for auditory information has been thought of as a unitary system, but whether WM for verbal and tonal information relies on the same or different functional neuroarchitectures has remained unknown. This fMRI study examines verbal and tonal WM in both nonmusicians (who are trained in speech, but not in music) and highly trained musicians (who are trained in both domains). The data show that core structures of WM are involved in both tonal and verbal WM (Broca's area, premotor ...[more]

PMID: 20533560

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Project description:PURPOSE:To investigate if, regardless of language background (tonal or non-tonal), musicians may show stronger CP than non-musicians; To examine if native speakers of English (English or non-tonal musicians henceforth) or Mandarin Chinese (Mandarin or tonal musicians henceforth) can better accommodate multiple functions of the same acoustic cue and if musicians' sensitivity to pitch of lexical tones comes at the cost of slower processing. METHOD:English and Mandarin Musicians and non-musicians performed a categorical identification and a discrimination task on rising and falling continua of fundamental frequency on two vowels with 9 duration values. RESULTS:Non-tonal musicians exhibited significantly stronger categorical perception of pitch contour than non-tonal non-musicians. However, tonal musicians did not consistently perceive the two types of pitch directions more categorically than tonal non-musicians. Both tonal and non-tonal musicians also benefited more from increasing stimulus duration in processing pitch changes than non-musicians and they generally require less time for pitch processing. Musicians were also more sensitive to intrinsic F0 in pitch perception and differences of pitch types. CONCLUSION:The effect of musical training strengthens categorical perception more consistently in non-tonal speakers than tonal speakers. Overall, musicians benefit more from increased stimulus duration, due perhaps to their greater sensitivity to temporal information, thus allowing them to be better at forming a more robust auditory representation and matching sounds to internalized memory templates. Musicians also attended more to acoustic details such as intrinsic F0 and pitch types in pitch processing, and yet, overall, their categorization of pitch was not compromised by traces of these acoustic details from their auditory short-term working memory. These findings may lead to a better understanding of pitch perception deficits in special populations, particularly among individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Dataset Information

Neuroarchitecture of verbal and tonal working memory in nonmusicians and musicians.

Publications

Neuroarchitecture of verbal and tonal working memory in nonmusicians and musicians.

Similar Datasets

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