Neurophysiological and Behavioral Differences between Older and Younger Adults When Processing Violations of Tonal Structure in Music

Abstract

Aging is associated with decline in both cognitive and auditory abilities. However, evidence suggests that music perception is relatively spared, despite relying on auditory and cognitive abilities that tend to decline with age. It is therefore likely that older adults engage compensatory mechanisms which should be evident in the underlying functional neurophysiology related to processing music. In other words, the perception of musical structure would be similar or enhanced in older compared to younger adults, while the underlying functional neurophysiology would be different. The present study aimed to compare the electrophysiological brain responses of younger and older adults to melodic incongruities during a passive and active listening task. Older and younger adults had a similar ability to detect an out-of-tune incongruity (i.e., non-chromatic), while the amplitudes of the ERAN and P600 were reduced in older adults compared to younger adults. On the other hand, out-of-key incongruities (i.e., non-diatonic), were better detected by older adults compared to younger adults, while the ERAN and P600 were comparable between the two age groups. This pattern of results indicates that perception of tonal structure is preserved in older adults, despite age-related neurophysiological changes in how melodic violations are processed.

Predictive Processes and the Peculiar Case of Music

“…This means we can predict it with high precision (i.e., with high confidence), given the preceding context of a scale. Later in the movement (after the beginning of the development section), the same passage is modified in a way that the last note of the scale is out of key -and is therefore irregular or improbable given the preceding syntactic context (see also Figure 2 [45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54]. In contrast to the classical MMN [28][29][30] -that depends on regularities in ongoing auditory input -the ERAN depends on syntactic knowledge that transcends current auditory sensations.…”

Autodidacticism and Music: Do Self-Taught Musicians Exhibit the Same Auditory Processing Advantages as Formally Trained Musicians?

“…Out-of-Tune notes are more salient than Out-of-Key notes because they violate the general chromatic scale used in all Western music, and not a diatonic scale that is specific to a melody or song. Supporting this hypothesis, previous work has shown that the ability to detect Out-of-tune notes was associated with the ERAN and not the P600, and that performance on a click-detection task was reduced when the click followed an Out-of-Tune note, but not an Outof-Key or In-Key note (Lagrois et al, 2018). Although we did not replicate the previously reported relationship between ERAN and Accuracy; Accuracy was lower in Nmus compared to STmus, but the P600 responses in these groups was comparable.…”

“…A set of 40 melodies were used as stimuli for the melody task. This is the same set of melodies that was first used by Brattico et al (2006), have since been used in a variety of music perception studies (e.g., Peretz et al, 2009;Zendel et al, 2015a;Lagrois et al, 2018;Vuvan et al, 2018). All melodies were in a major key and varied in rhythm.…”

“…The early right anterior negativity (ERAN) was quantified as the difference in amplitude between the event-related potential (ERP) evoked by the In-key and Out-of-key or Out-of-tune stimuli. Based on previous research (Brattico et al, 2006;Lagrois et al, 2018) and visual inspection of the data, the ERAN was extracted as the mean amplitude between 125 and 250 ms, from a montage of 11 fronto-right Electrodes (AFz, AF4, AF8, Fz, F2, F4, F6, FCz, FC2, FC4, FC6). Data was analyzed using a mixed design ANOVA, that included Note type (In-key, Out-of-key/Out-oftune) and Electrode as within-subject factors, and Group as a between-subject factor.…”

Aging effects on neural entrainment to a musical beat

“…On the other hand, the little evidence we have investigating music perception in older adults suggests that it is generally preserved (Halpern, Bartlett, & Dowling, 1995Halpern, Kwak, Bartlett, & Dowling, 1996;Halpern et al, 2017). In some cases the performance of a musical task is preserved, but the underlying brain activity changes, suggesting that older adults may automatically compensate for declining cognitive or perceptual abilities in the musical domain (Halpern et al, 2017;Lagrois, Peretz, & Zendel, 2018). This may be due to the development of compensatory mechanisms similar to those found for speech in noise perception, where older adults use contextual information to help overcome age-related changes in hearing and cognitive abilities (Birren & Fisher, 1995;Horn, 1982;Horn & Cattell, 1967;Madden, 1992;Pichora-Fuller, Schneider, & Daneman, 1995).…”