Comprehensive auditory discrimination profiles recorded with a fast parametric musical multi-feature mismatch negativity paradigm

2016

Abstract Objective Mismatch negativity (MMN), a component of the auditory event-related potential (ERP) in response to auditory-expectancy violation, is sensitive to central auditory processing deficits associated with several clinical conditions and to auditory skills deriving from musical expertise. This sensitivity is more evident for stimuli integrated in complex sound contexts. This study tested whether increasing magnitudes of deviation (levels) entail increasing MMN amplitude (or decreasing latency), aiming to create a balanced version of the musical multi-feature paradigm towards measurement of extensive auditory discrimination profiles in auditory expertise or deficits. Methods Usi…

Musical training predicts cerebello-hippocampal coupling during music listening.

2018

Cerebello-hippocampal interactions occur during accurate spatiotemporal prediction of movements. In the context of music listening, differences in cerebello-hippocampal functional connectivity may result from differences in predictive listening accuracy. Using functional MRI, we studied differences in this network between 18 musicians and 18 nonmusicians while they listened to music. Musicians possess a predictive listening advantage over nonmusicians, facilitated by strengthened coupling between produced and heard sounds through lifelong musical experience. Thus, we hypothesized that musicians would exhibit greater functional connectivity than nonmusicians as a marker of accurate online pr…

Semi-blind Independent Component Analysis of functional MRI elicited by continuous listening to music

2013

This study presents a method to analyze blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (tMRI) signals associated with listening to continuous music. Semi-blind independent component analysis (ICA) was applied to decompose the tMRI data to source level activation maps and their respective temporal courses. The unmixing matrix in the source separation process of ICA was constrained by a variety of acoustic features derived from the piece of music used as the stimulus in the experiment. This allowed more stable estimation and extraction of more activation maps of interest compared to conventional ICA methods.

Neural discrimination of nonprototypical chords in music experts and laymen:an MEG study

2009

Abstract At the level of the auditory cortex, musicians discriminate pitch changes more accurately than nonmusicians. However, it is not agreed upon how sound familiarity and musical expertise interact in the formation of pitch-change discrimination skills, that is, whether musicians possess musical pitch discrimination abilities that are generally more accurate than in nonmusicians or, alternatively, whether they may be distinguished from nonmusicians particularly with respect to the discrimination of nonprototypical sounds that do not play a reference role in Western tonal music. To resolve this, we used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to measure the change-related magnetic mismatch response…

Personality modulates brain responses to emotion in music: Comparing whole-brain and regions-of-variance approaches

2019

AbstractWhether and how personality traits explain the individual variance in neural responses to emotion in music remains unclear. The sparse studies on this topic report inconsistent findings. The present study extends previous work using regions of variance (ROVs) as regions of interest, compared with whole-brain analysis. Fifty-five subjects listened to happy, sad, and fearful music during functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Personality was measured with the Big Five Questionnaire. Results confirmed previous observations of Neuroticism being positively related to activation during sad music, in the left inferior parietal lobe. In an exploratory analysis, Openness was positively relat…

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

2017

Maladaptive and adaptive emotion regulation through music a behavioral and neuroimaging study of males and females

2015

Music therapists use guided affect regulation in the treatment of mood disorders. However, self-directed uses of music in affect regulation are not fully understood. Some uses of music may have negative effects on mental health, as can non music regulation strategies, such as rumination. Psychological testing and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) were used explore music listening strategies in relation to mental health. Participants (n = 123) were assessed for depression, anxiety and Neuroticism, and uses of Music in Mood Regulation (MMR). Neural responses to music were measured in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in a subset of participants (n = 56). Discharge, using music to…

Electrophysiological Correlates of Aesthetic Music Processing

2009

We analyzed the processes of making aesthetic judgments of music, focusing on the differences between music experts and laypersons. Sixteen students of musicology and 16 control subjects (also students) judged the aesthetic value as well as the harmonic correctness of chord sequences. Event-related potential (ERP) data indicate differences between experts and laypersons in making aesthetic judgments at three different processing stages. Additionally, effects of expertise on ERP components that have previously been proven to be sensitive to musical training were replicated. The study thus provides insights into the effects of musical expertise on neural correlates of aesthetic music processi…

Beauty and the brain: Investigating the neural and musical attributes of beauty during a naturalistic music listening experience

2020

ABSTRACTEvaluative beauty judgments are very common, but in spite of this commonality, are rarely studied in cognitive neuroscience. Here we investigated the neural and musical attributes of musical beauty using a naturalistic free-listening paradigm applied to behavioral and neuroimaging recordings and validated by experts’ judgments. In Study 1, 30 Western healthy adult participants rated continuously the perceived beauty of three musical pieces using a motion sensor. This allowed us to identify the passages in the three musical pieces that were inter-subjectively judged as beautiful or ugly. This informed the analysis for Study 2, where additional 36 participants were recorded with funct…

Capturing the musical brain with Lasso: Dynamic decoding of musical features from fMRI data.

2013

We investigated neural correlates of musical feature processing with a decoding approach. To this end, we used a method that combines computational extraction of musical features with regularized multiple regression (LASSO). Optimal model parameters were determined by maximizing the decoding accuracy using a leave-one-out cross-validation scheme. The method was applied to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data that were collected using a naturalistic paradigm, in which participants' brain responses were recorded while they were continuously listening to pieces of real music. The dependent variables comprised musical feature time series that were computationally extracted from the…

The sound of music: differentiating musicians using a fast, musical multi-feature mismatch negativity paradigm.

2011

Abstract Musicians’ skills in auditory processing depend highly on instrument, performance practice, and on level of expertise. Yet, it is not known though whether the style/genre of music might shape auditory processing in the brains of musicians. Here, we aimed at tackling the role of musical style/genre on modulating neural and behavioral responses to changes in musical features. Using a novel, fast and musical sounding multi-feature paradigm, we measured the mismatch negativity (MMN), a pre-attentive brain response, to six types of musical feature change in musicians playing three distinct styles of music (classical, jazz, rock/pop) and in non-musicians. Jazz and classical musicians sco…

Affective reactions to musical stimuli reflect emotional use of music in everyday life

2013

Music is a common means for regulating affective states in everyday life, but little is known about the individual differences in this behaviour. We investigated affective reactions to musical stimuli as an explanatory factor. Forty-four young adults rated self-selected music regarding perceived and felt emotions, preference, pleasantness and beauty. The ratings were reduced into five factors representing affective response tendencies. The participants also filled in the Music in Mood Regulation (MMR) questionnaire assessing seven music-related mood regulation strategies in everyday life. High beauty and pleasantness ratings for liked music correlated with the use of music for inducing str…

Musical expertise modulates functional connectivity of limbic regions during continuous music listening.

2015

Music is known to be an important facet of all human cultures (Merriam, 1964). Listening to music in order to influence moods, evoke strong emotions, and derive pleasure is becoming increasingly common, especially in this day and age when access to music is easy and quick. In recent years, exploring the neural correlates of musical emotions has attracted the attention of neuroscientists (Brattico & Pearce, 2013; Koelsch, Fritz, v. Cramon, Muller, & Friederici, 2006). However, the majority of these studies have not accounted for the effect of musical expertise, despite increasing evidence of structural and functional differences between musicians and nonmusicians, particularly in the regions…

The origins of the aesthetic enjoyment of music - A review of the literature

2009

Listeners attribute a positive or negative value to music. This aesthetic experience is known to be observable over the individuals’ entire life span, from early childhood to old age, and in every culture. It is then often concluded that such an aesthetic experience constitutes part of the human nature, having an important biological foundation. This assumption leads to the question of how aesthetic experience of music originated in the biological evolution. In this paper, we will explore this question in the light of evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, and systems neuroscience. After reviewing the existing proposals, we conclude that the explanation of the origin of aesthetic expe…

A functional MRI study of happy and sad emotions in music with and without lyrics

2011

Musical emotions, such as happiness and sadness, have been investigated using instrumental music devoid of linguistic content. However, pop and rock, the most common musical genres, utilize lyrics for conveying emotions. Using participants’ self-selected musical excerpts, we studied their behavior and brain responses to elucidate how lyrics interact with musical emotion processing, as reflected by emotion recognition and activation of limbic areas involved in affective experience. We extracted samples from subjects’ selections of sad and happy pieces and sorted them according to the presence of lyrics. Acoustic feature analysis showed that music with lyrics differed from music without lyric…

The chronnectome of musical beat

2020

Keeping time is fundamental for our everyday existence. Various isochronous activities, such as locomotion, require us to use internal timekeeping. This phenomenon comes into play also in other human pursuits such as dance and music. When listening to music, we spontaneously perceive and predict its beat. The process of beat perception comprises both beat inference and beat maintenance, their relative importance depending on the salience of beat in the music. To study functional connectivity associated with these processes in a naturalistic situation, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure brain responses of participants while they were listening to a piece of music contai…

The reliability of continuous brain responses during naturalistic listening to music

2015

Low-level (timbral) and high-level (tonal and rhythmical) musical features during continuous listening to music, studied by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), have been shown to elicit large-scale responses in cognitive, motor, and limbic brain networks. Using a similar methodological approach and a similar group of participants, we aimed to study the replicability of previous findings. Participants' fMRI responses during continuous listening of a tango Nuevo piece were correlated voxelwise against the time series of a set of perceptually validated musical features computationally extracted from the music. The replicability of previous results and the present study was assessed b…

Expertise in folk music alters the brain processing of Western harmony

2012

In various paradigms of modern neurosciences of music, experts of Western classical music have displayed superior brain architecture when compared with individuals without explicit training in music. In this paper, we show that chord violations embedded in musical cadences were neurally processed in a facilitated manner also by musicians trained in Finnish folk music. This result, obtained by using early right anterior negativity (ERAN) as an index of harmony processing, suggests that tonal processing is advanced in folk musicians by their long-term exposure to both Western and non-Western music.

Superior analgesic effect of an active distraction versus pleasant unfamiliar sounds and music:The influence of emotion and cognitive style

2012

Listening to music has been found to reduce acute and chronic pain. The underlying mechanisms are poorly understood; however, emotion and cognitive mechanisms have been suggested to influence the analgesic effect of music. In this study we investigated the influence of familiarity, emotional and cognitive features, and cognitive style on music-induced analgesia. Forty-eight healthy participants were divided into three groups (empathizers, systemizers and balanced) and received acute pain induced by heat while listening to different sounds. Participants listened to unfamiliar Mozart music rated with high valence and low arousal, unfamiliar environmental sounds with similar valence and arousa…

Cognitive and Motor Loops of the Human Cerebro-cerebellar System

2010

Abstract We applied fMRI and diffusion-weighted MRI to study the segregation of cognitive and motor functions in the human cerebro-cerebellar system. Our fMRI results show that a load increase in a nonverbal auditory working memory task is associated with enhanced brain activity in the parietal, dorsal premotor, and lateral prefrontal cortices and in lobules VII–VIII of the posterior cerebellum, whereas a sensory-motor control task activated the motor/somatosensory, medial prefrontal, and posterior cingulate cortices and lobules V/VI of the anterior cerebellum. The load-dependent activity in the crus I/II had a specific relationship with cognitive performance: This activity correlated negat…

Aesthetic responses to music: A questionnaire study

2009

We explored the content and structure of the cognitive, knowledge-based concept underlying aesthetic responses to music. To this aim, we asked 290 Finnish students to verbally associate the aesthetic value of music and to write down a list of appropriate adjectives within a given time limit. No music was presented during the task. In addition, information about participants’ musical background was collected. A variety of analysis techniques was used to determine the key results of our study. The adjective “beautiful” proved to be the core item of the concept under question. Interestingly, the adjective “touching” was often listed together with “beautiful”. In addition, we found music-speci…

Cognitive vs. affective listening modes and judgments of music - An ERP study

2010

The neural correlates of processing deviations from Western music rules are relatively well known. Less is known of the neural dynamics of top-down listening modes and affective liking judgments in relation with judgments of tonal correctness. In this study, subjects determined if tonal chord sequences sounded correct or incorrect, or if they liked them or not, while their electroencephalogram (EEG) was measured. The last chord of the sequences could be congruous with the previous context, ambiguous (unusual but still enjoyable) or harmonically inappropriate. The cognitive vs. affective listening modes were differentiated in the event-related potential (ERP) responses already before the end…

Trait empathy modulates music-related functional connectivity

2021

It has been well established through behavioural studies that empathy significantly influences music perception. Such individual differences typically manifest as variability in whole brain functional connectivity patterns. To date, nobody has examined the modulatory effect of empathy on functional connectivity patterns during continuous music listening. In the present study, we seek to investigate the global and local connectivity patterns of 36 participants whose fMRI scanning was done by employing the naturalistic paradigm wherein they listened to a continuous piece of music. We used graph-based measures of functional connectivity to identify how cognitive and affective components of emp…

Intelligence and Music: Lower Intelligent Quotient Is Associated With Higher Use of Music for Experiencing Strong Sensations

2020

Intelligence is a key psychological feature associated to emotion and perception. Listening to music is often linked to emotional experience and sensation seeking (SS), traits that have been shown overall negatively correlated with intelligence. In a sample of 53 musicians and 54 non-musicians, we assessed the use of music for experiencing strong emotions through the Music in Mood Regulation (MMR) and the intelligence quotient (IQ) by using the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale III (WAIS-III). We found a negative correlation between the full IQ score and the use of music for SS in both musician and non-musician groups. Furthermore, the use of music for SS was negatively correlated with Ver…

Predicting Individual Differences from Brain Responses to Music using Functional Network Centrality

2022

Individual differences are known to modulate brain responses to music. Recent neuroscience research suggests that each individual has unique and fundamentally stable functional brain connections irrespective of the task they perform. 77 participants’ functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) responses were measured while continuously listening to music. Using a graph-theory-based approach, we modeled whole-brain functional connectivity. We then calculate voxel-wise eigenvector centrality and subsequently use it to classify gender and musical expertise using binary Support Vector Machine (SVM). We achieved a cross-validated classification accuracy of 97% and 96% for gender and musical exp…

Music and Emotions in the Brain: Familiarity Matters

2011

The importance of music in our daily life has given rise to an increased number of studies addressing the brain regions involved in its appreciation. Some of these studies controlled only for the familiarity of the stimuli, while others relied on pleasantness ratings, and others still on musical preferences. With a listening test and a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment, we wished to clarify the role of familiarity in the brain correlates of music appreciation by controlling, in the same study, for both familiarity and musical preferences. First, we conducted a listening test, in which participants rated the familiarity and liking of song excerpts from the pop/rock repe…

The association of noise sensitivity with music listening, training, and aptitude

2015

After intensive, long-term musical training, the auditory system of a musician is specifically tuned to perceive musical sounds. We wished to find out whether a musician's auditory system also develops increased sensitivity to any sound of everyday life, experiencing them as noise. For this purpose, an online survey, including questionnaires on noise sensitivity, musical background, and listening tests for assessing musical aptitude, was administered to 197 participants in Finland and Italy. Subjective noise sensitivity (assessed with the Weinstein's Noise Sensitivity Scale) was analyzed for associations with musicianship, musical aptitude, weekly time spent listening to music, and the impo…

It's Sad but I Like It The Neural Dissociation Between Musical Emotions and Liking in Experts and Laypersons

2016

Emotion-related areas of the brain, such as the medial frontal cortices, amygdala, and striatum, are activated during listening to sad or happy music as well as during listening to pleasurable music. Indeed, in music, like in other arts, sad and happy emotions might co-exist and be distinct from emotions of pleasure or enjoyment. Here we aimed at discerning the neural correlates of sadness or happiness in music as opposed those related to musical enjoyment. We further investigated whether musical expertise modulates the neural activity during affective listening of music. To these aims, 13 musicians and 16 non-musicians brought to the lab their most liked and disliked musical pieces with a …

Action in Perception: Prominent Visuo-Motor Functional Symmetry in Musicians during Music Listening.

2015

Musical training leads to sensory and motor neuroplastic changes in the human brain. Motivated by findings on enlarged corpus callosum in musicians and asymmetric somatomotor representation in string players, we investigated the relationship between musical training, callosal anatomy, and interhemispheric functional symmetry during music listening. Functional symmetry was increased in musicians compared to nonmusicians, and in keyboardists compared to string players. This increased functional symmetry was prominent in visual and motor brain networks. Callosal size did not significantly differ between groups except for the posterior callosum in musicians compared to nonmusicians. We conclude…

Dynamics of brain activity underlying working memory for music in a naturalistic condition

2014

We aimed at determining the functional neuroanatomy of working memory (WM) recognition of musical motifs that occurs while listening to music by adopting a non-standard procedure. Western tonal music provides naturally occurring repetition and variation of motifs. These serve as WM triggers, thus allowing us to study the phenomenon of motif tracking within real music. Adopting a modern tango as stimulus, a behavioural test helped to identify the stimulus motifs and build a time-course regressor of WM neural responses. This regressor was then correlated with the participants' (musicians') functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signal obtained during a continuous listening condition. In…

Key issues in decomposing fMRI during naturalistic and continuous music experience with independent component analysis

2014

Background: Independent component analysis (ICA) has been often used to decompose fMRI data mostly for the resting-state, block and event-related designs due to its outstanding advantage. For fMRI data during free-listening experiences, only a few exploratory studies applied ICA.New method: For processing the fMRI data elicited by 512-s modern tango, a FFT based band-pass filter was used to further pre-process the fMRI data to remove sources of no interest and noise. Then, a fast model order selection method was applied to estimate the number of sources. Next, both individual ICA and group ICA were performed. Subsequently, ICA components whose temporal courses were significantly correlated …

Generation of stimulus features for analysis of FMRI during natural auditory experiences

2014

In contrast to block and event-related designs for fMRI experiments, it becomes much more difficult to extract events of interest in the complex continuous stimulus for finding corresponding blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) responses. Recently, in a free music listening fMRI experiment, acoustic features of the naturalistic music stimulus were first extracted, and then principal component analysis (PCA) was applied to select the features of interest acting as the stimulus sequences. For feature generation, kernel PCA has shown its superiority over PCA in various applications, since it can implicitly exploit nonlinear relationship among features and such relationship seems to exist genera…

Practiced musical style shapes auditory skills

2012

Musicians' processing of sounds depends highly on instrument, performance practice, and level of expertise. Here, we measured the mismatch negativity (MMN), a preattentive brain response, to six types of musical feature change in musicians playing three distinct styles of music (classical, jazz, and rock/pop) and in nonmusicians using a novel, fast, and musical sounding multifeature MMN paradigm. We found MMN to all six deviants, showing that MMN paradigms can be adapted to resemble a musical context. Furthermore, we found that jazz musicians had larger MMN amplitude than all other experimental groups across all sound features, indicating greater overall sensitivity to auditory outliers. Fu…

Differential Effects of Trait Empathy on Functional Network Centrality

2020

Previous research has shown that empathy, a fundamental component of human social functioning, is engaged when listening to music. Neuroimaging studies of empathy processing in music have, however, been limited. fMRI analysis methods based on graph theory have recently gained popularity as they are capable of illustrating global patterns of functional connectivity, which could be very useful in studying complex traits such as empathy. The current study examines the role of trait empathy, including cognitive and affective facets, on whole-brain functional network centrality in 36 participants listening to music in a naturalistic setting. Voxel-wise eigenvector centrality mapping was calculat…

Subjective appraisal of music: neuroimaging evidence.

2009

In the neurosciences of music, a consensus on the nature of affective states during music listening has not been reached. What is undeniable is that subjective affective states can be triggered by various and even opposite musical events. Here we review the few recent studies on the neural determinants of subjective affective processes of music, contrasted with early automatic neural processes linked to the objective universal properties of music. In particular, we focus on the evaluative judgments of music by subjects according to its aesthetic and structural values, on music-specific emotions felt by listeners, and on conscious liking. We then discuss and seek to stimulate further researc…

Cognitive control in auditory working memory is enhanced in musicians

2010

Musical competence may confer cognitive advantages that extend beyond processing of familiar musical sounds. Behavioural evidence indicates a general enhancement of both working memory and attention in musicians. It is possible that musicians, due to their training, are better able to maintain focus on task-relevant stimuli, a skill which is crucial to working memory. We measured the blood oxygenation-level dependent (BOLD) activation signal in musicians and non-musicians during working memory of musical sounds to determine the relation among performance, musical competence and generally enhanced cognition. All participants easily distinguished the stimuli. We tested the hypothesis that mus…

Dynamic Functional Connectivity in the Musical Brain

2019

Musical training causes structural and functional changes in the brain due to its sensory-motor demands. This leads to differences in how musicians perceive and process music as compared to non-musicians, thereby providing insights into brain adaptations and plasticity. Correlational studies and network analysis investigations have indicated the presence of large-scale brain networks involved in the processing of music and have highlighted differences between musicians and non-musicians. However, studies on functional connectivity in the brain during music listening tasks have thus far focused solely on static network analysis. Dynamic Functional Connectivity (DFC) studies have lately been …

The development of aesthetic responses to music and their underlying neural and psychological mechanisms.

2011

In the field of psychology, the first studies in experimental aesthetics were conducted approximately 140 years ago. Since then, research has mainly concentrated on aesthetic responses to visual art. Both the aesthetic experience of music and, especially, its development have received rather limited attention. Moreover, until now, very little attention has been paid to the investigation of the aesthetic experience of music using neuroscientific methods. Aesthetic experiences are multidimensional and include inter alia sensory, perceptual, affective, and cognitive components. Aesthetic processes are usually experienced as pleasing and rewarding and are, thus, important and valuable experienc…

Constituents of Music and Visual-Art Related Pleasure - A Critical Integrative Literature Review.

2017

The present literature review investigated how pleasure induced by music and visualart has been conceptually understood in empirical research over the past 20 years. After an initial selection of abstracts from seven databases (keywords: pleasure, reward, enjoyment, and hedonic), twenty music and eleven visual-art papers were systematically compared. The following questions were addressed: (1) What is the role of the keyword in the research question? (2) Is pleasure considered a result of variation in the perceiver’s internal or external attributes? (3) What are the most commonly employed methods and main variables in empirical settings? Based on these questions, our critical integrative an…

Musicianship can be decoded from magnetic resonance images

2020

AbstractLearning induces structural changes in the brain. Especially repeated, long-term behaviors, such as extensive training of playing a musical instrument, are likely to produce characteristic features to brain structure. However, it is not clear to what extent such structural features can be extracted from magnetic resonance images of the brain. Here we show that it is possible to predict whether a person is a musician or a non-musician based on the thickness of the cerebral cortex measured at 148 brain regions en-compassing the whole cortex. Using a supervised machine-learning technique, we achieved a significant (κ = 0.321, p < 0.001) agreement between the actual and predicted par…

'I love Rock 'n' Roll'--music genre preference modulates brain responses to music.

2013

The present study examined the effect of participants' music genre preference on the neural processes underlying evaluative and cognitive judgements of music using the event-related potential technique. To this aim, two participant groups differing in their preference for Latin American and Heavy Metal music performed a liking judgement and a genre classification task on a variety of excerpts of either music genre. A late positive potential (LPP) was elicited in all conditions between 600 and 900 ms after stimulus onset. During the genre classification task, an early negativity was elicited by the preferred compared to the non-preferred music at around 230-370 ms whereas the non-preferred g…

Distinct neural responses to chord violations: a multiple source analysis study.

2011

The human brain is constantly predicting the auditory environment by representing sequential similarities and extracting temporal regularities. It has been proposed that simple auditory regularities are extracted at lower stations of the auditory cortex and more complex ones at other brain regions, such as the prefrontal cortex. Deviations from auditory regularities elicit a family of early negative electric potentials distributed over the frontal regions of the scalp. In this study, we wished to disentangle the brain processes associated with sequential vs. hierarchical auditory regularities in a musical context by studying the event-related potentials (ERPs), the behavioral responses to v…

I know what i like when i see it:Likability is distinct from pleasantness since early stages of multimodal emotion evaluation

2021

Liking and pleasantness are common concepts in psychological emotion theories and in everyday language related to emotions. Despite obvious similarities between the terms, several empirical and theoretical notions support the idea that pleasantness and liking are cognitively different phenomena, becoming most evident in the context of emotion regulation and art enjoyment. In this study it was investigated whether liking and pleasantness indicate behaviourally measurable differences, not only in the long timespan of emotion regulation, but already within the initial affective responses to visual and auditory stimuli. A cross-modal affective priming protocol was used to assess whether there i…

Neuroanatomical substrate of noise sensitivity.

2018

Recent functional studies suggest that noise sensitivity, a trait describing attitudes towards noise and predicting noise annoyance, is associated with altered processing in the central auditory system. In the present work, we examined whether noise sensitivity could be related to the structural anatomy of auditory and limbic brain areas. Anatomical MR brain images of 80 subjects were parcellated with FreeSurfer to measure grey matter volume, cortical thickness, cortical area and folding index of anatomical structures in the temporal lobe and insular cortex. The grey matter volume of amygdala and hippocampus was measured as well. According to our findings, noise sensitivity is associated wi…

Large-scale brain networks emerge from dynamic processing of musical timbre, key and rhythm

2012

We investigated the neural underpinnings of timbral, tonal, and rhythmic features of a naturalistic musical stimulus. Participants were scanned with functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) while listening to a stimulus with a rich musical structure, a modern tango. We correlated temporal evolutions of timbral, tonal, and rhythmic features of the stimulus, extracted using acoustic feature extraction procedures, with the fMRI time series. Results corroborate those obtained with controlled stimuli in previous studies and highlight additional areas recruited during musical feature processing. While timbral feature processing was associated with activations in cognitive areas of the cerebel…

Music reduces pain and increases functional mobility in fibromyalgia

2014

The pain in Fibromyalgia (FM) is difficult to treat and functional mobility seems to be an important comorbidity in these patients that could evolve into a disability. In this study we wanted to investigate the analgesic effects of music in FM pain. Twenty-two FM patients were passively exposed to (1) self-chosen, relaxing, pleasant music, and to (2) a control auditory condition (pink noise). They rated pain and performed the "timed-up & go task (TUG)" to measure functional mobility after each auditory condition. Listening to relaxing, pleasant, self-chosen music reduced pain and increased functional mobility significantly in our FM patients. The music-induced analgesia was significantly co…

Diffusion map for clustering fMRI spatial maps extracted by Indipendent Component Analysis

2013

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) produces data about activity inside the brain, from which spatial maps can be extracted by independent component analysis (ICA). In datasets, there are n spatial maps that contain p voxels. The number of voxels is very high compared to the number of analyzed spatial maps. Clustering of the spatial maps is usually based on correlation matrices. This usually works well, although such a similarity matrix inherently can explain only a certain amount of the total variance contained in the high-dimensional data where n is relatively small but p is large. For high-dimensional space, it is reasonable to perform dimensionality reduction before clustering.…

Influence of Musical Expertise on the processing of Musical Features in a Naturalistic Setting

2019

Musical training causes structural and functional changes in the brain due to its sensory-motor demands, but the modulatory effect of musical training on music feature processing in the brain in a continuous music listening paradigm, has not been investigated thus far. In this work, we investigate the differences between musicians and non-musicians in the encoding of musical features encompassing musical timbre, rhythm and tone. 18 musicians and 18 non-musicians were scanned using fMRI while listening to 3 varied stimuli. Acoustic features corresponding to timbre, rhythm and tone were computationally extracted from the stimuli and correlated with brain responses, followed by t-tests on grou…

Modulated neural processing of Western harmony in folk musicians

2013

A chord deviating from the conventions of Western tonal music elicits an early right anterior negativity (ERAN) in inferofrontal brain regions. Here, we tested whether the ERAN is modulated by expertise in more than one music culture, as typical of folk musicians. Finnish folk musicians and nonmusicians participated in electroencephalography recordings. The cadences consisted of seven chords. In incongruous cadences, the third, fifth, or seventh chord was a Neapolitan. The ERAN to the Neapolitans was enhanced in folk musicians compared to nonmusicians. Folk musicians showed an enhanced P3a for the ending Neapolitan. The Neapolitan at the fifth position was perceived differently and elicited…

Coupling of Action-Perception Brain Networks during Musical Pulse Processing: Evidence from Region-of-Interest-Based Independent Component Analysis

2017

Our sense of rhythm relies on orchestrated activity of several cerebral and cerebellar structures. Although functional connectivity studies have advanced our understanding of rhythm perception, this phenomenon has not been sufficiently studied as a function of musical training and beyond the General Linear Model (GLM) approach. Here, we studied pulse clarity processing during naturalistic music listening using a data-driven approach (independent component analysis; ICA). Participants’ (18 musicians and 18 controls) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) responses were acquired while listening to music. A targeted region of interest (ROI) related to pulse clarity processing was defined…

New fast mismatch negativity paradigm for determining the neural prerequisites for musical ability.

2011

Studies have consistently shown that the mismatch negativity (MMN) for different auditory features correlates with musical skills, and that this effect is more pronounced for stimuli integrated in complex musical contexts. Hence, the MMN can potentially be used for determining the development of auditory skills and musical expertise. MMN paradigms, however, are typically very long in duration, and far from sounding musical. Therefore, we developed a novel multi-feature MMN paradigm with 6 different deviant types integrated in a complex musical context of no more than 20 min in duration. We found significant MMNs for all 6 deviant types. Hence, this short objective measure can putatively be …

Hidden sources of joy, fear, and sadness: Explicit versus implicit neural processing of musical emotions.

2016

Music is often used to regulate emotions and mood. Typically, music conveys and induces emotions even when one does not attend to them. Studies on the neural substrates of musical emotions have, however, only examined brain activity when subjects have focused on the emotional content of the music. Here we address with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) the neural processing of happy, sad, and fearful music with a paradigm in which 56 subjects were instructed to either classify the emotions (explicit condition) or pay attention to the number of instruments playing (implicit condition) in 4-s music clips. In the implicit vs. explicit condition, stimuli activated bilaterally the infe…

Event-related brain responses while listening to entire pieces of music

2017

Brain responses to discrete short sounds have been studied intensively using the event-related potential (ERP) method, in which the electroencephalogram (EEG) signal is divided into epochs time-locked to stimuli of interest. Here we introduce and apply a novel technique which enables one to isolate ERPs in human elicited by continuous music. The ERPs were recorded during listening to a Tango Nuevo piece, a deep techno track and an acoustic lullaby. Acoustic features related to timbre, harmony, and dynamics of the audio signal were computationally extracted from the musical pieces. Negative deflation occurring around 100 milliseconds after the stimulus onset (N100) and positive deflation occ…

Fractionating auditory priors: A neural dissociation between active and passive experience of musical sounds

2019

Learning, attention and action play a crucial role in determining how stimulus predictions are formed, stored, and updated. Years-long experience with the specific repertoires of sounds of one or more musical styles is what characterizes professional musicians. Here we contrasted active experience with sounds, namely long-lasting motor practice, theoretical study and engaged listening to the acoustic features characterizing a musical style of choice in professional musicians with mainly passive experience of sounds in laypersons. We hypothesized that long-term active experience of sounds would influence the neural predictions of the stylistic features in professional musicians in a distinct…

From Vivaldi to Beatles and back: predicting lateralized brain responses to music.

2013

We aimed at predicting the temporal evolution of brain activity in naturalistic music listening conditions using a combination of neuroimaging and acoustic feature extraction. Participants were scanned using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) while listening to two musical medleys, including pieces from various genres with and without lyrics. Regression models were built to predict voxel-wise brain activations which were then tested in a cross-validation setting in order to evaluate the robustness of the hence created models across stimuli. To further assess the generalizability of the models we extended the cross-validation procedure by including another dataset, which comprised …

Aesthetic judgments of music in experts and laypersons--an ERP study.

2010

We investigated whether music experts and laypersons differ with regard to aesthetic evaluation of musical sequences 16 music experts and 16 music laypersons judged the aesthetic value (beauty judgment task) as well as the harmonic correctness (correctness judgment task) of chord sequences The sequences consisted of five chords with the final chord sounding congruous, ambiguous or incongruous relative to the harmonic context established by the preceding four chords On behavioural measures, few differences were observed between experts and laypersons However, several differences in event-related potential (ERP) parameters were observed in auditory, cognitive and aesthetic processing of chord…

Detrimental noise effects on brain's speech functions.

2009

Background noise has become part of our everyday life in modern societies. Its presence affects both the ability to concentrate and communicate. Some individuals, like children, the elderly, and non-native speakers have pronounced problems in noisy environments. Here we review evidence suggesting that background noise has both transient and Sustained detrimental effects on central speech processing. Studies on the effects of noise on neural processes have demonstrated hemispheric reorganization in speech processing in adult individuals during background noise. During noise, the well-known left hemisphere dominance in speech discrimination became right hemisphere preponderant. Furthermore, l…

Connectivity patterns during music listening: Evidence for action-based processing in musicians

2017

Musical expertise is visible both in the morphology and functionality of the brain. Recent research indicates that functional integration between multi-sensory, somato-motor, default-mode (DMN), and salience (SN) networks of the brain differentiates musicians from non-musicians during resting state. Here, we aimed at determining whether brain networks differentially exchange information in musicians as opposed to non-musicians during naturalistic music listening. Whole-brain graph-theory analyses were performed on participants' fMRI responses. Group-level differences revealed that musicians' primary hubs comprised cerebral and cerebellar sensorimotor regions whereas non-musicians' dominant …

Pleasurable music affects reinforcement learning according to the listener.

2013

Mounting evidence links the enjoyment of music to brain areas implicated in emotion and the dopaminergic reward system. In particular, dopamine release in the ventral striatum seems to play a major role in the rewarding aspect of music listening. Striatal dopamine also influences reinforcement learning, such that subjects with greater dopamine efficacy learn better to approach rewards while those with lesser dopamine efficacy learn better to avoid punishments. In this study, we explored the practical implications of musical pleasure through its ability to facilitate reinforcement learning via non-pharmacological dopamine elicitation. Subjects from a wide variety of musical backgrounds chose…

Decoding Musical Training from Dynamic Processing of Musical Features in the Brain

2018

AbstractPattern recognition on neural activations from naturalistic music listening has been successful at predicting neural responses of listeners from musical features, and vice versa. Inter-subject differences in the decoding accuracies have arisen partly from musical training that has widely recognized structural and functional effects on the brain. We propose and evaluate a decoding approach aimed at predicting the musicianship class of an individual listener from dynamic neural processing of musical features. Whole brain functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data was acquired from musicians and nonmusicians during listening of three musical pieces from different genres. Six mus…

Connectivity Patterns During Music Listening: Evidence for Action-Based Processing in Musicians

2017

Musical expertise is visible both in the morphology and functionality of the brain. Recent research indicates that functional integration between multi-sensory, somato-motor, default-mode (DMN), and salience (SN) networks of the brain differentiates musicians from non-musicians during resting state. Here, we aimed at determining whether brain networks differentially exchange information in musicians as opposed to non-musicians during naturalistic music listening. Whole-brain graph-theory analyses were performed on participants' fMRI responses. Group-level differences revealed that musicians' primary hubs comprised cerebral and cerebellar sensorimotor regions whereas non-musicians' dominant …