Abstract
BackgroundRecent electrophysiological and neuroimaging studies have explored how and where musical syntax in Western music is processed in the human brain. An inappropriate chord progression elicits an event-related potential (ERP) component called an early right anterior negativity (ERAN) or simply an early anterior negativity (EAN) in an early stage of processing the musical syntax. Though the possible underlying mechanism of the EAN is assumed to be probabilistic learning, the effect of the probability of chord progressions on the EAN response has not been previously explored explicitly.Methodology/Principal FindingsIn the present study, the empirical conditional probabilities in a Western music corpus were employed as an approximation of the frequencies in previous exposure of participants. Three types of chord progression were presented to musicians and non-musicians in order to examine the correlation between the probability of chord progression and the neuromagnetic response using magnetoencephalography (MEG). Chord progressions were found to elicit early responses in a negatively correlating fashion with the conditional probability. Observed EANm (as a magnetic counterpart of the EAN component) responses were consistent with the previously reported EAN responses in terms of latency and location. The effect of conditional probability interacted with the effect of musical training. In addition, the neural response also correlated with the behavioral measures in the non-musicians.Conclusions/SignificanceOur study is the first to reveal the correlation between the probability of chord progression and the corresponding neuromagnetic response. The current results suggest that the physiological response is a reflection of the probabilistic representations of the musical syntax. Moreover, the results indicate that the probabilistic representation is related to the musical training as well as the sensitivity of an individual.
Highlights
Harmonic progression and probabilistic learning Recent electrophysiological and neuroimaging studies have explored how the musical syntax, that of harmonic progression, in Western music is processed and which regions of the human brain are involved [1]
The EANm responses were elicited by rare chord progressions, which is consistent with previous studies [3,13,22]
Since the rare chord functions were already played within the sequence before the position of the ending chord, the lHG rHG lIFG rIFG
Summary
Harmonic progression and probabilistic learning Recent electrophysiological and neuroimaging studies have explored how the musical syntax, that of harmonic progression, in Western music is processed and which regions of the human brain are involved [1]. Rapid learning in short-term exposure While the ERAN response is assumed to be dependent on repetitive exposure over a long time and following long-term memory, a violation within a simple sound pattern after repetitions in a short period of time is known to elicit a typical negative ERP response with a latency of 150–210 ms after the onset of the deviant occurrence. EAN responses were elicited only when the deviant pitch sets were presented with a smaller probability than the standard pitch sets and the amplitude of the EAN increased as the exposure accumulated during the 1-hourlong experiment These support the notion that the neural mechanism underlying the EAN response is related to a rapid ability to learn probabilistic patterns of the occurrences [21]. If there are individual differences in the probabilistic representation on the sequential structures in music, it will be reflected in the neural response related to the rarity of musical events and will correlate with the individual ability to discriminate them
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