Auditory Evoked Responses in Musicians during Passive Vowel Listening Are Modulated by Functional Connectivity between Bilateral Auditory-related Brain Regions

Abstract

Currently, there is striking evidence showing that professional musical training can substantially alter the response properties of auditory-related cortical fields. Such plastic changes have previously been shown not only to abet the processing of musical sounds, but likewise spectral and temporal aspects of speech. Therefore, here we used the EEG technique and measured a sample of musicians and nonmusicians while the participants were passively exposed to artificial vowels in the context of an oddball paradigm. Thereby, we evaluated whether increased intracerebral functional connectivity between bilateral auditoryrelated brain regions may promote sensory specialization in musicians, as reflected by altered cortical N1 and P2 responses. This assumption builds on the reasoning that sensory specialization is dependent, at least in part, on the amount of synchronization between the two auditory-related cortices. Results clearly revealed that auditory-evoked N1 responses were shaped by musical expertise. In addition, in line with our reasoning musicians showed an overall increased intracerebral functional connectivity (as indexed by lagged phase synchronization) in theta, alpha, and beta bands. Finally, within-group correlative analyses indicated a relationship between intracerebral beta band connectivity and cortical N1 responses, however only within the musicians' group. Taken together, we provide first electrophysiological evidence for a relationship between musical expertise, auditory-evoked brain responses, and intracerebral functional connectivity among auditory-related brain regions. Therefore, here we used the EEG technique and measured a sample of musicians and nonmusicians while the participants were passively exposed to artificial vowels in the context of an oddball paradigm. Thereby, we evaluated whether increased intracerebral functional connectivity between bilateral auditoryrelated brain regions may promote sensory specialization in musicians, as reflected by altered cortical N1 and P2 responses. This assumption builds on the reasoning that sensory specialization is dependent, at least in part, on the amount of synchronization between the two auditory-related cortices. Results clearly revealed that auditory-evoked N1 responses were shaped by musical expertise. In addition, in line with our reasoning musicians showed an overall increased intracerebral functional connectivity (as indexed by lagged phase synchronization) in theta, alpha, and beta bands. Finally, within-group correlative analyses indicated a relationship between intracerebral beta band connectivity and cortical N1 responses, however only within the musiciansʼ group. Taken together, we provide first electrophysiological evidence for a relationship between musical expertise, auditory-evoked brain responses, and intracerebral functional connectivity among auditory-related brain regions. ■

Psilocybin-induced spiritual experiences and insightfulness are associated with synchronization of neuronal oscillations

“…Thus, it removes the instantaneous component, which is driven by non-physiological effects and intrinsic physical artifacts that occur due to volume conduction and low spatial resolution (Nolte et al 2004;Stam et al 2007;Schoffelen and Gross 2009;Pascual-Marqui et al 2011). Accordingly, lagged phase synchronization has been increasingly used in recent studies (Canuet et al 2011;Hilty et al 2011;Canuet et al 2012;Guggisberg et al 2014;Kühnis et al 2014;Olbrich et al 2014;Ramyead et al 2014;Steinmann et al 2014;Elmer et al 2015;Vecchio et al, 2015) and has received cross-modal validation by studies combining EEG-based lagged phase synchronization measurements with MRI-based diffusion tensor imaging (Vecchio et al 2015).…”

Interhemispheric transcallosal connectivity between the left and right planum temporale predicts musicianship, performance in temporal speech processing, and functional specialization

“…Meanwhile, it is generally acknowledged that during auditory perception the auditory cortices of both hemispheres interact with each other in a highly dynamic manner (Sinai and Pratt 2003). In this context, a recent study of Kühnis et al (2014) provided first evidence for an increased intracerebral functional connectivity between bilateral auditory-related brain regions in musicians compared to nonmusicians while passively listening to spectral rich speech sounds. In addition, within the musician group intracerebral connectivity fairly well correlated with auditory-evoked potentials reflecting activity originating from the auditory-related cortex.…”

“…Therefore, it is not surprising that RD also correlated with the AMMA score. In fact, based on the previous results of Kühnis et al (2014) it is conceivable to assume that musicians perform better than nonmusicians in this specific spectrotemporal task due to an increased impulse transmission between the two hemispheres enabling an optimized division of labour. In a previous study Fedorenko et al (2012) combined individual-subject fMRI analyses with a scrambling method that manipulated musical structure and provided evidence for a bilateral representation of musical structure in the temporal lobe.…”

Professional Music Training and Novel Word Learning: From Faster Semantic Encoding to Longer-lasting Word Representations

“…These transfer effects possibly arise because speech and music are auditory signals relying on similar acoustic cues (i.e., duration, frequency, intensity, and timbre) and because they share, at least in part, common neuronal substrates for auditory perception (Peretz, Vuvan, Lagrois, & Armony, 2015;Jäncke, 2009) and for higher-order cognitive processing (Rogalsky, Rong, Saberi, & Hickok, 2011;Patel, 2008;Maess, Koelsch, Gunter, & Friederici, 2001). For instance, music training facilitates the processing of a variety of segmental (Bidelman, Weiss, Moreno, & Alain, 2014;Kühnis, Elmer, & Jäncke, 2014;Elmer, Meyer, & Jäncke, 2012;Chobert, Marie, François, Schön, & Besson, 2011;Musacchia, Sams, Skoe, & Kraus, 2007) and suprasegmental speech attributes (Marie, Delogu, Lampis, Olivetti Belardinelli, & Besson, 2011;Wong & Perrachione, 2007) within native (Schön, Magne, & Besson, 2004) and nonnative languages (Marques, Moreno, Castro, & Besson, 2007). Moreover, both musically trained children (Jentschke & Koelsch, 2009) and adults (Fitzroy & Sanders, 2013) are more sensitive to violations of linguistic and music syntax than participants without music training.…”

“…On the basis of previous results showing that musicians are advantaged when the discrimination is most difficult (Diamond, 2013;Schön et al, 2004), we expected musicians to outperform controls in identifying phonemic contrasts that are not relevant for lexical discrimination in French. Moreover, based on previous literature reporting that the N100 component reflects encoding of auditory cues in the auditory-related cortex (Kühnis et al, 2014) and is influenced by auditory attention and perceptual learning (Seppänen, Hämäläinen, Pesonen, & Tervaniemi, 2012;Woldorff & Hillyard, 1991), we expected this behavioral advantage to be accompanied by an increased N100 amplitude in musicians.…”