Abstract
Recent research has demonstrated top–down effects on meter induction in the auditory modality. However, little is known about these effects in the visual domain, especially without the involvement of motor acts such as tapping. In the present study, we aim to assess whether the projection of meter on auditory beats is also present in the visual domain. We asked 16 musicians to internally project binary (i.e., a strong-weak pattern) and ternary (i.e., a strong-weak-weak pattern) meter onto separate, but analog, visual and auditory isochronous stimuli. Participants were presented with sequences of tones or blinking circular shapes (i.e., flashes) at 2.4 Hz while their electrophysiological responses were recorded. A frequency analysis of the elicited steady-state evoked potentials allowed us to compare the frequencies of the beat (2.4 Hz), its first harmonic (4.8 Hz), the binary subharmonic (1.2 Hz), and the ternary subharmonic (0.8 Hz) within and across modalities. Taking the amplitude spectra into account, we observed an enhancement of the amplitude at 0.8 Hz in the ternary condition for both modalities, suggesting meter induction across modalities. There was an interaction between modality and voltage at 2.4 and 4.8 Hz. Looking at the power spectra, we also observed significant differences from zero in the auditory, but not in the visual, binary condition at 1.2 Hz. These findings suggest that meter processing is modulated by top–down mechanisms that interact with our perception of rhythmic events and that such modulation can also be found in the visual domain. The reported cross-modal effects of meter may shed light on the origins of our timing mechanisms, partially developed in primates and allowing humans to synchronize across modalities accurately.
Highlights
Metrical structure is fundamental for our perception of rhythm in music
Our objective is to explore the extent to which meter induction is domain-specific: whether it is tightly constrained to the auditory modality, or whether similar neural correlates can be found across modalities
There is a larger peak at the beat frequency for all three auditory conditions compared to their visual analogs, whereas the inverse effect occurs at the frequency of the first harmonic, depicting a larger peak for all three visual conditions
Summary
Metrical structure is fundamental for our perception of rhythm in music. It allows humans to process the temporal events of music in an organized manner. Metrical structure is based on two distinct processes: beat extraction and meter induction (Fitch, 2013). The former consists of extracting an isochronous beat from a stream of events. This results in beats appearing as periodic points over time. The latter consists of the hierarchical organization of these periodic beats into sequences of strong and weak patterns. The downbeat (the perceptually prominent beat) usually occurs at a subharmonic frequency of the beat, such as 2:1, 3:1, or other more complex integer
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