Abstract
Recent magnetoencephalography (MEG) studies have established that sensorimotor brain rhythms are strongly modulated during mental imagery of musical beat and rhythm, suggesting that motor regions of the brain are important for temporal aspects of musical imagery. The present study examined whether these rhythms also play a role in non-temporal aspects of musical imagery including musical pitch. Brain function was measured with MEG from 19 healthy adults while they performed a validated musical pitch imagery task and two non-imagery control tasks with identical temporal characteristics. A 4-dipole source model probed activity in bilateral auditory and sensorimotor cortices. Significantly greater β-band modulation was found during imagery compared to control tasks of auditory perception and mental arithmetic. Imagery-induced β-modulation showed no significant differences between auditory and sensorimotor regions, which may reflect a tightly coordinated mode of communication between these areas. Directed connectivity analysis in the θ-band revealed that the left sensorimotor region drove left auditory region during imagery onset. These results add to the growing evidence that motor regions of the brain are involved in the top-down generation of musical imagery, and that imagery-like processes may be involved in musical perception.
Highlights
Recent magnetoencephalography (MEG) studies have established that sensorimotor brain rhythms are strongly modulated during mental imagery of musical beat and rhythm, suggesting that motor regions of the brain are important for temporal aspects of musical imagery
Individual differences were measured for musical experience (MEI) and auditory imagery vividness (BAIS). (Methods)
Accuracy on the Imagery and Maths tasks was significantly correlated with musical experience index (MEI; r = 0.50, p = 0.028; and r = 0.47, p = 0.04, respectively)
Summary
Recent magnetoencephalography (MEG) studies have established that sensorimotor brain rhythms are strongly modulated during mental imagery of musical beat and rhythm, suggesting that motor regions of the brain are important for temporal aspects of musical imagery. Recent evidence has confirmed that β-band modulation reflects predictability of pitch (that is ‘what’) and not just timing (or ‘when’ an event will occur), since greater trial-by-trial ERD prior to a predictable tone is related to a reduced P3a amplitude after the tone[29,30] Both physical and imagined accents on a downbeat modulate the β-band response, suggesting that the β-band plays a role in the temporal coordination of auditory and motor operations in music perception and imagery[25,27]. Recent approaches using magnetoencephalography (MEG) have isolated the primary auditory and sensorimotor regions to investigate how they coordinate in perceptual activities, in beat perception[34], temporal prediction[35] and passive listening[36] Results from these studies suggest the right auditory cortex is primarily involved in beat perception[34]. Given the overlapping activation in these areas during perception and imagery, investigating the coordination and connectivity of the primary auditory and sensorimotor regions in the θ, μ and β frequencies could prove to be fruitful in the exploration of similarities and differences between musical imagery and perception
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