Distinct neuronal entrainment to beat and meter: Revealed by simultaneous EEG-fMRI

Li, Qiang; Liu, Guangyuan; Wei, Dongtao; Liu, Ying; Yuan, Guangjie; Wang, Gaoyuan

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.03.039

Cited by 25 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Thus, activity in both regions should show patterns that repeat with the metrical cycle as well as with the beat; this is indeed observed in a recent EEG-fMRI study [84] . A major advantage of a framework that separates the timing and sequencing activity into separate brain regions is that it allows for metrical structures that include non-isochronous durations as "beats" [85] (as in various traditional musics like Balkan music, where such musical structures inspire tightly coordinated rhythmic movement in enculturated performers and dancers).…”

Section: From Action Sequencing To Metrical Anticipationsupporting

confidence: 70%

How beat perception coopts motor neurophysiology

Cannon

Patel

2019

Preprint

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A fundamental aspect of music cognition is the perception of an underlying metronome-like pulse ("the beat") in complex rhythmic patterns. A key finding from neuroimaging is that even in the absence of movement, beat perception strongly engages the motor system. Existing efforts to create conceptual and computational models of beat perception do not strongly engage with known neurocomputational properties of the motor system. Here we construct a mechanistic model of beat perception grounded in neurophysiology. The model uses two distinct timing signals in medial frontal cortex to infer tempo and to produce intervals that anticipate beats. Signals are sent along the direct pathway through basal ganglia to initiate the covert production of intervals. In the absence of direct pathway activation, medial frontal cortex is driving the hyperdirect pathway, creating a periodic cycle of global inhibition and facilitation of movement initiation. Striatal dopamine reinforces a top-down beat percept when anticipation is accurate and a bottom-up percept when it is not. We highlight the experimental results and lines of reasoning that support these hypotheses; we implement the model in silico and note important aspects of human beat-based timing that it reproduces; and we explore the model's predictive and explanatory power, especially regarding the therapeutic effect of the beat in Parkinson's disease. Highlights Box• The Action Simulation for Auditory Prediction (ASAP) hypothesis posits that covert anticipatory timing of a musical beat is performed by the motor system. • Current discussion of beat-based timing does not address the balance between external responsiveness and internal maintenance necessary to adapt to beat timing changes but maintain a beat through syncopated or ambiguous rhythms. • Beats may be anticipated by an adjustable-speed ("relative") timer in the supplementary motor area, initiated and reset like a movement via the basal ganglia direct pathway. • The beta oscillation that fluctuates with the beat may be an anti-kinetic "hold" signal that would scaffold entrainment of non-specific movements.• Striatal dopamine may serve as an index of confidence in the beat tempo and phase, allowing the motor system to transition between a synchronization and beat-continuation.Abbreviations BBT = beat-based timing MFC = medial frontal cortex PMC = premotor cortex IBS = "internal beat strength" SCT = synchronization/continuation task 108 (49), 19784-19789. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1112933108 6 Note that their absolute/relative terminology does not align with ours: we [unfortunately] categorize their "relative timing cells" and "absolute timing cells" both as "relative timing signals."

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Section: From Action Sequencing To Metrical Anticipationsupporting

confidence: 70%

How beat perception coopts motor neurophysiology

Cannon

Patel

2019

Preprint

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“…While our results suggest that neural responses to rhythmic input might involve processes largely independent on attentional focus, this does not imply that neural processing of rhythm is fixed and inflexible. A number of recent studies have shown that selective neural enhancement of meter periodicities reflects flexible processes, which are sensitive to mental imagery (Nozaradan et al, 2011;Li et al, 2019), non-temporal features of the acoustic input (Lenc et al, 2018), prior experience (Chemin et al, 2014), and recent context (Lenc et al, 2020). Importantly, our current findings show that the internal transformation of a rhythmic input towards a particular metric category can be flexibly enhanced, possibly changed, but it is difficult to suppress completely: it has an automatic component.…”

Section: Wide Range Of Low-level and Higher-level Processes In Meter mentioning

confidence: 99%

Attention affects overall gain but not selective contrast at meter frequencies in the neural processing of rhythm

Lenc

Keller

Varlet

et al. 2020

Preprint

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When listening to music, humans spontaneously perceive and synchronize movement to periodic pulses of meter. A growing body of evidence suggests that this widespread ability is related to neural processes that selectively enhance meter periodicities. However, to what extent these neural processes are affected by the attentional state of the listener remains largely unknown. Here, we recorded EEG while participants listened to auditory rhythms and detected small changes in tempo or pitch of the stimulus, or performed a visual task. The overall neural response to the auditory input decreased when participants attended the visual modality, indicating generally lower sensitivity to acoustic information. However, the selective contrast at meter periodicities did not differ across the three tasks. Moreover, this selective contrast could be trivially accounted for by biologically-plausible models of subcortical auditory processing, but only when meter periodicities were already prominent in the acoustic input. However, when meter periodicities were not prominent in the auditory input, the EEG responses could not be explained by low-level processing. This was also confirmed by early auditory responses that originate predominantly in early auditory areas and were recorded in the same EEG. The contrast at meter periodicities in these early responses was consistently smaller than in the EEG responses originating mainly from higher-level processing stages. Together, these results demonstrate that selective contrast at meter periodicities involves higher-level neural processes that may be engaged automatically, irrespective of behavioral context. This robust shaping of the neural representation of rhythm might thus contribute to spontaneous and effortless synchronization to musical meter in humans across cultures.

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“…Recent studies provided evidence for a link between perception of musical meter and neural entrainment by showing that sequences of identical tones (e.g., displayed at a rate of 2.4 Hz) can lead to differential neural responses depending solely on the metric interpretation of the listener (Fujioka et al, 2010(Fujioka et al, , 2012(Fujioka et al, , 2015Li et al, 2019;Nozaradan et al, 2011). Using frequency tagging, recent studies observed lowfrequency power peaks corresponding to the metric structure that listeners endogenously impose on the sequences (e.g., at 1.2 Hz for a binary meter and at 0.8 Hz for a ternary meter; (Li et al, 2019;Nozaradan et al, 2011)). Based on these findings, it has been proposed that simultaneous neural entrainment to beat and meter frequencies underlies rhythm perception (Nozaradan, 2014;Nozaradan et al, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Oscillatory responses to generated and perceived rhythms

Ostarek

Alday

Gawel

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Neural oscillations have been proposed as a mechanism for structure building in language and music. In music, this idea is appealing because of the intuitive mapping between perceptual and neural rhythms. The strongest evidence has come from studies in which participants listened to isochronous sequences of identical tones and were asked to imagine hearing them in binary (march) or ternary meter (waltz). The critical finding was that in addition to increased signal at the frequency corresponding to the tone rate there was increased signal at the imagined meter frequencies. While it is striking that meter tracking was observed without any acoustic cues in the input, rhythm perception was confounded with rhythm imagery involving active generation of rhythmic structure. We conducted two electroencephalography experiments with musicians and non-musicians, teasing apart the effects of rhythm perception and rhythm generation. Evidence for meter-related neural oscillations was only observed in situations where rhythmic structure was actively generated, either via rhythm imagery or in the form of overt behavior (tapping). Thus, our data suggest that mere rhythm perception is not sufficient to elicit oscillations at the meter frequency and that they are instead driven by the active generation of rhythm. This undermines the proposal that neural oscillations constitute a basic structure building mechanism in rhythm perception and raises questions about the role of oscillations in language processing.

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Distinct neuronal entrainment to beat and meter: Revealed by simultaneous EEG-fMRI

Cited by 25 publications

References 32 publications

How beat perception coopts motor neurophysiology

How beat perception coopts motor neurophysiology

Attention affects overall gain but not selective contrast at meter frequencies in the neural processing of rhythm

Oscillatory responses to generated and perceived rhythms

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