Remembering sounds in the brain: From locationist findings to dynamic connectivity research

Abstract

Our world is full of sounds, either verbal or non-verbal, pleasant or unpleasant, meaningful or simply irrelevant noise. Understanding, memorizing, and predicting the sounds, even non-verbal ones which our environment is full of, is a complex perceptuo-cognitive function that we constantly refine by everyday experience and learning. Musical sounds are a peculiar case due to their culture-dependent complexity and hierarchical organization requiring cognitive functions such as memory to be understood, and due to the presence of individuals (musicians) who dedicate their lifetime to master the specifics of those sounds and rules. Thus far, most of the neuroimaging research focused on verbal sounds and how they are processed and stored in the human brain. Only recently, researchers have tried to elucidate the neural mechanisms and structures allowing non-verbal, musical sounds to be modeled, predicted and remembered. However, those neuroimaging studies often provide only a mere snapshot of a complex dynamic process unfolding over time. To capture the complexity of musical memory and cognition, new methods are needed. A promising analysis method is dynamic functional connectivity, which assumes that functional connectivity changes in a short time. We conclude that moving from a locationist to a dynamic perspective on auditory memory might allow us to finally comprehend the neural mechanisms that regulate encoding and retrieval of sounds.