Hysteresis in the selective synchronization of brain activity to perceived meter in musical rhythms
(2019) Rhythm Production and Perception Workshop — Location: Traverse City, MI (17.June.2019)
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- Abstract
- Musical meter refers to the spontaneous ability of humans to perceive and move along with a periodic structure of embedded pulse-like beats when listening to music. Importantly, meter can be perceived in regular rhythms, but also in syncopated rhythms in which the meter periodicities are not prominent in the acoustic input. This might be particularly the case if a syncopated rhythm is preceded by a regular rhythm that supports meter induction. Here we show that this effect of context and invariance relative to the input may be supported by hysteresis in the selective synchronization of neural activity to the perceived meter. We recorded the EEG while non-musician and musician participants listened to nonrepeating rhythmic sequences where the prominence of meter frequencies in the input either gradually decreased (regular-to-syncopated rhythms) or increased (syncopated-to-regular rhythms). In sequences gradually transforming from regular to syncopated rhythms, non-musicians showed greater persistence of neural activity selectively synchronized to the meter frequencies when these frequencies became less prominent in the input, compared to sequences gradually changing from syncopated to regular rhythms. When asked to tap to similar sequences after the EEG recording, non- musicians also demonstrated overall better motor entrainment to the meter in sequences that started with prominent meter. In contrast, musicians did not show hysteresis in their neural responses, and were able to precisely synchronize their movements to the meter regardless of the prominence of the meter frequencies in the input, thus demonstrating overall greater invariance relative to the stimulus. Together, these results show that perceptual organization of rhythmic auditory input cannot be fully explained by physical stimulus features, but involves endogenous processes driven by short- and long- term neural plasticity. These results also provide additional evidence for an endogenous neural mechanism of frequency-selective coupling that could be the basis of rhythmic entrainment abilities in humans.
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Lenc, T., Keller, P. E., Varlet, M., & Nozaradan, S. (2019). Hysteresis in the selective synchronization of brain activity to perceived meter in musical rhythms. Rhythm Production and Perception Workshop, Traverse City, MI. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/26131