Auditory novelty oddball allows reliable distinction of top–down and bottom–up processes of attention

Electroencephalography (EEG) was used in a cross-cultural music study investigating phrase boundary perception. Chinese and German musicians performed a cultural categorization task under Chinese and Western music listening conditions. Western music was the major subject for both groups of musicians, while Chinese music was familiar to Chinese subjects only. By manipulating the presence of pauses between two phrases in the biphrasal melodies, EEG correlates for the perception of phrase boundaries were found in both groups under both music listening conditions. Between 450 and 600 ms, the music CPS (closure positive shift), which had been found in earlier studies with a false tone detection task, was replicated for the more global categorization task and for all combinations of subject group and musical style. At short latencies (100 and 450 ms post phrase boundary offset), EEG correlates varied as a function of musical styles and subject group. Both bottom-up (style properties of the music) and top-down (acculturation of the subjects) information interacted during this early processing stage. IntroductionMusic is a culturally specific phenomenon, which is certainly determined by ethnic background, social environment and traditions. However, the question to what extent the ability to understand and appreciate music is culturally dependent is still controversial. Ethnomusicologists usually assume that extensive experience of music within its cultural context is essential for its basic structural principles to be understood (Blacking, 1973). Lynch and Eilers (1992) explored musical tuning perception in infancy and adulthood and found that adult's perception of musical tuning was culturally specific, and infants between 6 and 12 months of age started to show the same culturally specific performance as adults did. In the same line, Drake and El Heni (2003) proved that acculturation, i.e., the passive exposure to a particular type of music since birth, influenced the perception and cognition of music. On the other hand, some psychological studies have proved the existence of universal, not culturally dependent, aspects of music perception (Castellano et al., 1984;Krumhansl, 1995Krumhansl, , 2000. Drake and Bertrand (2001) reviewed a number of rhythm perception and production studies and concluded that some aspects of temporal processing in music might be universal, in the sense that they function in a similar manner irrespective of an individual's cultural exposure and experience. Likewise, in a study of the cross-cultural emotion perception in music,

show abstract

“…2 Such a P3 reduction effect as a function of repetition has been evidenced in previous studies (Debener et al, 2002;Ravden and Polich, 1998).…”

Section: 2supporting

confidence: 58%

The perception of musical phrase structure: A cross-cultural ERP study

2006

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…As can be seen in the left column, all three conditions evoked a small P1 (peak latency 48 ms) followed by a prominent N1 ERP (106 ms), which was slightly larger for target than for novel and frequent stimuli. Novel stimuli evoked a novelty-P3 component, whereas target stimuli evoked a P3b (for a detailed discussion of the ERP results see [23]). …”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Top-down attentional processing enhances auditory evoked gamma band activity

Debener¹,

Herrmann²,

Kranczioch³

et al. 2003

NeuroReport

193

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In contrast to animal studies, relatively little is known about the functional signi¢cance of the early evoked gamma band activity in humans.We investigated whether evoked and induced 40 Hz activity di¡erentiate automatic, bottom-up aspects of attention from voluntary, top-down related attentional demands. An auditory novelty-oddball task was applied to14 healthy subjects. As predicted, more evoked gamma was found for the target condition than in the two task-irrelevant conditions. Since gamma band activity was not enhanced for novel stimuli, the evoked gamma response cannot be explained with a simple concept of stimulus arousal. Neither induced gamma nor the degree of 40 Hz phase-locking were di¡er-ent between the experimental conditions.Taken together, our data emphasize the role of evoked gamma band activity for top-down attentional processing.

show abstract

“…Attentional resources used to maintain memory items in parietal regions may result from response organization produced by bottom-up processing (Conroy and Polich, 2007;Nieuwenhuis et al, 2005;Verleger et al, 2005). In sum, stimulus characteristics and task demands are determinants of distracter evaluation and contribute to the different topographic and timing outcomes observed at the scalp (Berti et al, 2004;Debener et al, 2002;Gaeta et al, 2003;Polich and Comerchero, 2003).…”

Section: Neural Origins Of P3a and P3bmentioning

confidence: 99%

Updating P300: An integrative theory of P3a and P3b

Polich

2007

Clinical Neurophysiology

6,445

458

6,265

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The empirical and theoretical development of the P300 event-related brain potential (ERP) is reviewed by considering factors that contribute to its amplitude, latency, and general characteristics. The neuropsychological origins of the P3a and P3b subcomponents are detailed, and how target/ standard discrimination difficulty modulates scalp topography is discussed. The neural loci of P3a and P3b generation are outlined, and a cognitive model is proffered: P3a originates from stimulusdriven frontal attention mechanisms during task processing, whereas P3b originates from temporalparietal activity associated with attention and appears related to subsequent memory processing. Neurotransmitter actions associating P3a to frontal/dopaminergic and P3b to parietal/norepinephrine pathways are highlighted. Neuroinhibition is suggested as an overarching theoretical mechanism for P300, which is elicited when stimulus detection engages memory operations.

show abstract

Auditory novelty oddball allows reliable distinction of top–down and bottom–up processes of attention

Cited by 115 publications

References 22 publications

The perception of musical phrase structure: A cross-cultural ERP study

The perception of musical phrase structure: A cross-cultural ERP study

Top-down attentional processing enhances auditory evoked gamma band activity

Updating P300: An integrative theory of P3a and P3b

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About