Auditory rhythm encoding during the last trimester of human gestation: From tracking the basic beat to tracking hierarchical nested temporal structures.

Rhythm perception and synchronization to periodicity hold fundamental neurodevelopmental importance for language acquisition, musical behavior, and social communication. Rhythm is omnipresent in the fetal auditory world and newborns demonstrate sensitivity to auditory rhythmic cues. During the last trimester of gestation, the brain begins to respond to auditory stimulation and to code the auditory environment.

Examining methodological influences on the rhythmic priming effect: A commentary on Kim, McLaren, and Lee (2024).

The rhythmic priming effect (RPE) refers to improved language performance (typically grammaticality judgements) following regular rhythmic primes compared to various control conditions. This effect has been observed primarily in French, but also in English and Hungarian. However, a recent implementation by Kim, McLaren & Lee (2024), aiming to replicate the RPE in English (Chern, Tillmann, Vaughan & Gordon, 2018), was not successful, inviting a discussion about the conditions under which the RPE could be observed.

Deficits in congenital amusia: Pitch, music, speech, and beyond.

Congenital amusia is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by deficits of music perception and production, which are related to altered pitch processing. The present study used a wide variety of tasks to test potential patterns of processing impairment in individuals with congenital amusia (N = 18) in comparison to matched controls (N = 19), notably classical pitch processing tests (i.e.

Lights on music cognition: A systematic and critical review of fNIRS applications and future perspectives.

Research investigating the neural processes related to music perception and production constitutes a well-established field within the cognitive neurosciences. While most neuroimaging tools have limitations in studying the complexity of musical experiences, functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) represents a promising, relatively new tool for studying music processes in both laboratory and ecological settings, which is also suitable for both typical and pathological populations across development. Here we systematically review fNIRS studies on music cognition, highlighting prospects and potentialities.

Enhancing musical pleasure through shared musical experience.

Music and social interactions represent two of the most important sources of pleasure in our lives, both engaging the mesolimbic dopaminergic system. However, there is limited understanding regarding whether and how sharing a musical activity in a social context influences and modifies individuals' rewarding experiences. Here, we aimed at (1) modulating the pleasure derived from music under different social scenarios and (2) further investigating its impact on reward-related prosocial behavior and memory.

Evidence for a competitive relationship between executive functions and statistical learning.

The ability of the brain to extract patterns from the environment and predict future events, known as statistical learning, has been proposed to interact in a competitive manner with prefrontal lobe-related networks and their characteristic cognitive or executive functions. However, it remains unclear whether these cognitive functions also possess a competitive relationship with implicit statistical learning across individuals and at the level of latent executive function components. In order to address this currently unknown aspect, we investigated, in two independent experiments (N = 186, N = 157), the relationship between implicit statistical learning, measured by the Alternating Serial Reaction Time task, and executive functions, measured by multiple neuropsychological tests.

Cross-frequency coupling in cortico-hippocampal networks supports the maintenance of sequential auditory information in short-term memory.

It has been suggested that cross-frequency coupling in cortico-hippocampal networks enables the maintenance of multiple visuo-spatial items in working memory. However, whether this mechanism acts as a global neural code for memory retention across sensory modalities remains to be demonstrated. Intracranial EEG data were recorded while drug-resistant patients with epilepsy performed a delayed matched-to-sample task with tone sequences.

Episodic memory and recognition are influenced by cues' sensory modality: comparing odours, music and faces using virtual reality.

Most everyday experiences are multisensory, and all senses can trigger the conscious re-experience of unique personal events embedded in their specific spatio-temporal context. Yet, little is known about how a cue's sensory modality influences episodic memory, and which step of this process is impacted. This study investigated recognition and episodic memory across olfactory, auditory and visual sensory modalities in a laboratory-ecological task using a non-immersive virtual reality device.

Auditory cortex and beyond: Deficits in congenital amusia.

Congenital amusia is a neuro-developmental disorder of music perception and production, with the observed deficits contrasting with the sophisticated music processing reported for the general population. Musical deficits within amusia have been hypothesized to arise from altered pitch processing, with impairments in pitch discrimination and, notably, short-term memory. We here review research investigating its behavioral and neural correlates, in particular the impairments at encoding, retention, and recollection of pitch information, as well as how these impairments extend to the processing of pitch cues in speech and emotion.

Regular rhythmic primes improve sentence repetition in children with developmental language disorder.

Recently reported links between rhythm and grammar processing have opened new perspectives for using rhythm in clinical interventions for children with developmental language disorder (DLD). Previous research using the rhythmic priming paradigm has shown improved performance on language tasks after regular rhythmic primes compared to control conditions. However, this research has been limited to effects of rhythmic priming on grammaticality judgments.

A Recurrent Connectionist Model of Melody Perception: An Exploration Using TRACX2.

Are similar, or even identical, mechanisms used in the computational modeling of speech segmentation, serial image processing, and music processing? We address this question by exploring how TRACX2, a recognition-based, recursive connectionist autoencoder model of chunking and sequence segmentation, which has successfully simulated speech and serial-image processing, might be applied to elementary melody perception. The model, a three-layer autoencoder that recognizes "chunks" of short sequences of intervals that have been frequently encountered on input, is trained on the tone intervals of melodically simple French children's songs. It dynamically incorporates the internal representations of these chunks into new input.

Individuals with congenital amusia remember music they like.

Music is better recognized when it is liked. Does this association remain evident when music perception and memory are severely impaired, as in congenital amusia? We tested 11 amusic and 11 matched control participants, asking whether liking of a musical excerpt influences subsequent recognition. In an initial exposure phase, participants-unaware that their recognition would be tested subsequently-listened to 24 musical excerpts and judged how much they liked each excerpt.

Modality-specific and modality-independent neural representations work in concert in predictive processes during sequence learning.

Probabilistic sequence learning supports the development of skills and enables predictive processing. It remains contentious whether visuomotor sequence learning is driven by the representation of the visual sequence (perceptual coding) or by the representation of the response sequence (motor coding). Neurotypical adults performed a visuomotor sequence learning task.

Improving non-native duration contrast with dichotic training in dyslexic and non-dyslexic individuals.

Perceiving and producing English phonemic vowel length contrasts is challenging for non-native speakers. According to multi-time resolution models, endogenous slow/fast rhythms contribute, respectively, in the right/left hemispheres, to long/short acoustic cue processing. This study introduced a perceptual training method implementing dichotic stimulation to improve /i:/-/ɪ/ processing by promoting hemispheric complementarity.

Consonance Perception in Congenital Amusia: Behavioral and Brain Responses to Harmonicity and Beating Cues.

Congenital amusia is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by difficulties in the perception and production of music, including the perception of consonance and dissonance, or the judgment of certain combinations of pitches as more pleasant than others. Two perceptual cues for dissonance are inharmonicity (the lack of a common fundamental frequency between components) and beating (amplitude fluctuations produced by close, interacting frequency components). Amusic individuals have previously been reported to be insensitive to inharmonicity, but to exhibit normal sensitivity to beats.

Musical Emotion Categorization with Vocoders of Varying Temporal and Spectral Content.

While previous research investigating music emotion perception of cochlear implant (CI) users observed that temporal cues informing tempo largely convey emotional arousal (relaxing/stimulating), it remains unclear how other properties of the temporal content may contribute to the transmission of arousal features. Moreover, while detailed spectral information related to pitch and harmony in music - often not well perceived by CI users- reportedly conveys emotional valence (positive, negative), it remains unclear how the quality of spectral content contributes to valence perception. Therefore, the current study used vocoders to vary temporal and spectral content of music and tested music emotion categorization (joy, fear, serenity, sadness) in 23 normal-hearing participants.

Do developmental dyslexia and congenital amusia share underlying impairments?

Developmental dyslexia and congenital amusia have common characteristics. Yet, their possible association in some individuals has been addressed only scarcely. Recently, two converging studies reported a sizable comorbidity rate between these two neurodevelopmental disorders (Couvignou et al.

Enhanced mismatch negativity in harmonic compared with inharmonic sounds.

Many natural sounds have frequency spectra composed of integer multiples of a fundamental frequency. This property, known as harmonicity, plays an important role in auditory information processing. However, the extent to which harmonicity influences the processing of sound features beyond pitch is still unclear.

Tonal structures benefit short-term memory for real music: Evidence from non-musicians and individuals with congenital amusia.

Congenital amusia is a neurodevelopmental disorder of music processing, which includes impaired pitch memory, associated to abnormalities in the right fronto-temporal network. Previous research has shown that tonal structures (as defined by the Western musical system) improve short-term memory performance for short tone sequences (in comparison to atonal versions) in non-musician listeners, but the tonal structures only benefited response times in amusic individuals. We here tested the potential benefit of tonal structures for short-term memory with more complex musical material.

You got rhythm, or more: The multidimensionality of rhythmic abilities.

Humans have a remarkable capacity for perceiving and producing rhythm. Rhythmic competence is often viewed as a single concept, with participants who perform more or less accurately on a single rhythm task. However, research is revealing numerous sub-processes and competencies involved in rhythm perception and production, which can be selectively impaired or enhanced.

When Visual Cues Do Not Help the Beat: Evidence for a Detrimental Effect of Moving Point-Light Figures on Rhythmic Priming.

Rhythm perception involves strong auditory-motor connections that can be enhanced with movement. However, it is unclear whether just seeing someone moving to a rhythm can enhance auditory-motor coupling, resulting in stronger entrainment. Rhythmic priming studies show that presenting regular rhythms before naturally spoken sentences can enhance grammaticality judgments compared to irregular rhythms or other baseline conditions.

Development of auditory cognition in 5- to 10-year-old children: Focus on musical and verbal short-term memory.

Developmental aspects of auditory cognition were investigated in 5-to-10-year-old children (n = 100). Musical and verbal short-term memory (STM) were assessed by means of delayed matching-to-sample tasks (DMST) (comparison of two four-item sequences separated by a silent retention delay), with two levels of difficulty. For musical and verbal materials, children's performance increased from 5 years to about 7 years of age, then remained stable up to 10 years of age, with performance remaining inferior to performance of young adults.

The Emotional Effect of Background Music on Selective Attention of Adults.

Daily activities can often be performed while listening to music, which could influence the ability to select relevant stimuli while ignoring distractors. Previous studies have established that the level of arousal of music (e.g.

Blunted emotion judgments of body movements in Parkinson's disease.

Some of the behavioral disorders observed in Parkinson's disease (PD) may be related to an altered processing of social messages, including emotional expressions. Emotions conveyed by whole body movements may be difficult to generate and be detected by PD patients. The aim of the present study was to compare valence judgments of emotional whole body expressions in individuals with PD and in healthy controls matched for age, gender and education.

Atypical beta power fluctuation while listening to an isochronous sequence in dyslexia.

Objective: Developmental dyslexia is a reading disorder that features difficulties in perceiving and tracking rhythmic regularities in auditory streams, such as speech and music. Studies on typical healthy participants have shown that power fluctuations of neural oscillations in beta band (15-25 Hz) reflect an essential mechanism for tracking rhythm or entrainment and relate to predictive timing and attentional processes. Here we investigated whether adults with dyslexia have atypical beta power fluctuation.