Neural correlates of rhythmic expectancy

Abstract

Temporal expectancy is thought to play a fundamental role in the perception of rhythm. This review summarizes recent studies that investigated rhythmic expectancy by recording neuroelectric activity with high temporal resolution during the presentation of rhythmic patterns. Prior event-related brain potential (ERP) studies have uncovered auditory evoked responses that reflect detection of onsets, offsets, sustains, and abrupt changes in acoustic properties such as frequency, intensity, and spectrum, in addition to indexing higher-order processes such as auditory sensory memory and the violation of expectancy. In our studies of rhythmic expectancy, we measured emitted responses – a type of ERP that occurs when an expected event is omitted from a regular series of stimulus events – in simple rhythms with temporal structures typical of music. Our observations suggest that middle-latency gamma band (20-60 Hz) activity (GBA) plays an essential role in auditory rhythm processing. Evoked (phase-locked) GBA occurs in the presence of physically presented auditory events and reflects the degree of accent. Induced (non-phase-locked) GBA reflects temporally precise expectancies for strongly and weakly accented events in sound patterns. Thus far, these findings support theories of rhythm perception that posit temporal expectancies generated by active neural processes.