Music, Language, and The N400: ERP Interference Patterns Across Cognitive Domains

Abstract

Studies of the relationship of language and music have suggested these two systems may share processing resources involved in the computation/maintenance of abstract hierarchical structure (syntax). one type of evidence comes from eRp interference studies involving concurrent language/ music processing showing interaction effects when both processing streams are simultaneously perturbed by violations (e.g., syntactically incorrect words paired with incongruent completion of a chord progression). Here, we employ this interference methodology to target the mechanisms supporting long term memory (LtM) access/retrieval in language and music. We used melody stimuli from previous work showing out-of-key or unexpected notes may elicit a musical analogue of language N400 effects, but only for familiar melodies, and not for unfamiliar ones. Target notes in these melodies were time-locked to visually presented target words in sentence contexts manipulating lexical/ conceptual semantic congruity. Our study succeeded in eliciting expected N400 responses from each cognitive domain independently. Among several new findings we argue to be of interest, these data demonstrate that: (i) language N400 effects are delayed in onset by concurrent music processing only when melodies are familiar, and (ii) double violations with familiar melodies (but not with unfamiliar ones) yield a sub-additive N400 response. In addition: (iii) early negativities (RAN effects), which previous work has connected to musical syntax, along with the music N400, were together delayed in onset for familiar melodies relative to the timing of these effects reported in the previous music-only study using these same stimuli, and (iv) double violation cases involving unfamiliar/novel melodies also delayed the RAN effect onset. These patterns constitute the first demonstration of N400 interference effects across these domains and together contribute previously undocumented types of interactions to the available pool of findings relevant to understanding whether language and music may rely on shared underlying mechanisms.

Tension experience induced by tonal and melodic shift at music phrase boundaries

“…Evaluation of the relationship between the two phrases would be evaluated in a different way from that in the TS condition. Our results did not find N400 as that in the study of Miranda and Ullman 29 and Calma-Roddin and Drury 30 . It might be due to the familiarity of the music sequences used in the experiments.…”

“…A follow-up analysis of that study demonstrated that the P3a component was induced by out-of-the-key notes in the melodic sequences. Similarly, Calma-Roddin and Drury 30 found that ERAN was delayed in unfamiliar melodies compared with familiar ones, and Fogel et al 31 found that melodic prediction depended on local pitch intervals and large-scale melodic patterns by using a cloze probability task. These findings provide solid proof that prediction of musical features (tonal and melodic) plays a vital role in music perception.…”

“…For the MS condition, the N400 component was also an alternative. N400 was induced by melodic prediction violation in the studies by Miranda and Ullman 29 and Calma-Roddin and Drury 30 . The two studies used familiar melodies and explained that the music-induced N400 might indicate access/retrieval of long-term memory and integration of incongruent melodies.…”

Implementing Art and Music in Maltese Courses for Non-Native Adults

“…Some interventions include the use of art and music in L2 classes. Art, music and language have similar neural resources for processing prosody, semantics and syntax (Calma-Roddin & Drury, 2020). Similarly, art and music have diverse effects on language learning (Chobert & Besson, 2013).…”

The Influence of Embedded Music on the Memorization of Mandarin Chinese

“…Those results indicated that there is not much shared by language and music at the cognitive level. On the other hand, other researchers lay more emphasis on their similarities, holding that the two fields share quite a few basic mechanisms, even though there are some specializations (Gordon et al, 2010;Calma-Roddin & Drury, 2020;Sternin et al, 2021;Wesseldijk et al, 2021). More specifically, they share mechanisms that integrate learned sound categories, draw the regulations of rhythm and melody, form syntactic structure with basic units like words and notes, and extract the emotional meanings from acoustic information (Patel, 2008).…”