Abstract
It is advantageous to study a wide range of vocal abilities in order to fully understand how vocal control measures vary across the full spectrum. Individuals with absolute pitch (AP) are able to assign a verbal label to musical notes and have enhanced abilities in pitch identification without reliance on an external referent. In this study we used dynamic causal modeling (DCM) to model effective connectivity of ERP responses to pitch perturbation in voice auditory feedback in musicians with relative pitch (RP), AP, and non-musician controls. We identified a network compromising left and right hemisphere superior temporal gyrus (STG), primary motor cortex (M1), and premotor cortex (PM). We specified nine models and compared two main factors examining various combinations of STG involvement in feedback pitch error detection/correction process. Our results suggest that modulation of left to right STG connections are important in the identification of self-voice error and sensory motor integration in AP musicians. We also identify reduced connectivity of left hemisphere PM to STG connections in AP and RP groups during the error detection and corrections process relative to non-musicians. We suggest that this suppression may allow for enhanced connectivity relating to pitch identification in the right hemisphere in those with more precise pitch matching abilities. Musicians with enhanced pitch identification abilities likely have an improved auditory error detection and correction system involving connectivity of STG regions. Our findings here also suggest that individuals with AP are more adept at using feedback related to pitch from the right hemisphere.
Highlights
Understanding the neural mechanisms underlying human vocalization provides insight into sensory motor control that can inform voice production in health and disease
In the present experiment we studied effective connectivity in musicians with absolute pitch (AP) compared to musicians with relative pitch (RP) and subjects with no musical ability (NM) using dynamic causal modeling (DCM) to model effective connectivity of ERP responses to pitch shifted auditory feedback
DCM RESULTS Factor 1—effect of superior temporal gyrus (STG) modulation across hemispheres there were no significant winning families identified for each group, Bayesian model selection (BMS) of the three families examining factor 1 identified that the AP group favored models with left to right STG connections (LtoR, models 1, 4, and 7, as displayed in Figure 2) being modulated (0.71 LtoR, 0.12 RtoL and 0.17 both random effects model exceedance probability)
Summary
Understanding the neural mechanisms underlying human vocalization provides insight into sensory motor control that can inform voice production in health and disease. The behavioral characteristics of AP have been examined extensively the etiology is still unknown Differences in both structural and functional characteristics of the brains of individuals with AP when compared to controls who do not possess AP have been identified (Schlaug et al, 1995; Schlaug, 2001; Bermudez et al, 2009; Loui et al, 2011; Dohn et al, 2013). Functional imaging studies have identified differences in AP, inferior frontal (Zatorre et al, 1998) and superior temporal regions as being increasingly activated in AP musicians during tone perception and pitch memory tasks (Schulze et al, 2009, 2012)
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