Neural entrainment to musical rhythms in human auditory cortex, as revealed by intracerebral recordings

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Neural entrainment to musical rhythms in human auditory cortex, as revealed by intracerebral recordings Sylvie Nozaradan1*, Jacques Jonas2, 3, Jean-Pierre Vignal3, 4, Louis Maillard3, 5 and Andre Mouraux6 1 Université Catholique de Louvain, Institute of Neuroscience (Ions), Belgium 2 Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium 3 Université de Lorraine, Faculté de médecine, France 4 CHU Nancy, France 5 CHU Nancy, Neurology Department, France 6 Université Catholique de Louvain, Institute of Neuroscience, Belgium Beat and meter refers to the spontaneous perception of periodicities while listening to music, occurring within the frequency range of musical tempo (e.g., perceiving a waltz as a three-beats meter). How the brain computes this perception of periodicity from complex rhythms that are not necessarily periodic in reality remains unknown. Here, using depth-electrodes implanted in the superior temporal gyrus of two patients with refractory partial epilepsy, we tested whether listening to rhythms that induce spontaneous beat and meter from the non-periodic modulation of the sound envelope induce beat- and meter-related neuronal entrainment within the auditory cortex. We found that in the medial part of the left and right primary auditory cortex, steady-state evoked potentials (SS-EPs) were elicited at frequencies corresponding to the rhythm envelope. Most importantly, the amplitude of the SS-EPs obtained at beat and meter frequencies were selectively enhanced, even though the acoustic energy of the eliciting sounds was not necessarily predominant at these frequencies. Furthermore, this selective enhancement was impaired by accelerating or decelerating the tempo of the rhythmic stimuli such as to move away from the range of frequencies at which beats are usually perceived. Strikingly, these neural responses were highly similar to that obtained using this approach to capture beat and meter-related activities at the level of the scalp. Taken together, the results of this first intracerebral investigation of the neural responses to musical rhythms in humans show that beat and meter perception modulates the processing of incoming auditory input already at the level of the primary auditory cortex, probably through a top-down mechanism of dynamic attending. These observations highlight the interest of human intracerebral recording to understand beat perception in music and, more generally, how perceptual objects emerge within the human auditory system. Keywords: music cognition, Musical rhythm, neural entrainment, EEG steady-state evoked potentials, human depth-electrode recording Conference: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014. Presentation Type: Poster Topic: Sensation and Perception Citation: Nozaradan S, Jonas J, Vignal J, Maillard L and Mouraux A (2015). Neural entrainment to musical rhythms in human auditory cortex, as revealed by intracerebral recordings. Conference Abstract: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00276 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 19 Feb 2015; Published Online: 24 Apr 2015. * Correspondence: Dr. Sylvie Nozaradan, Université Catholique de Louvain, Institute of Neuroscience (Ions), Brussels, Belgium, sylvie.nozaradan@uclouvain.be Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Sylvie Nozaradan Jacques Jonas Jean-Pierre Vignal Louis Maillard Andre Mouraux Google Sylvie Nozaradan Jacques Jonas Jean-Pierre Vignal Louis Maillard Andre Mouraux Google Scholar Sylvie Nozaradan Jacques Jonas Jean-Pierre Vignal Louis Maillard Andre Mouraux PubMed Sylvie Nozaradan Jacques Jonas Jean-Pierre Vignal Louis Maillard Andre Mouraux Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.