Infants segment words from songs - an EEG study

Children’s songs are omnipresent and highly attractive stimuli in infants’ input. Previous work suggests that infants process linguistic–phonetic information from simplified sung melodies. The present study investigated whether infants learn words from ecologically valid children’s songs. Testing 40 Dutch-learning 10-month-olds in a familiarization-then-test electroencephalography (EEG) paradigm, this study asked whether infants can segment repeated target words embedded in songs during familiarization and subsequently recognize those words in continuous speech in the test phase. To replicate previous speech work and compare segmentation across modalities, infants participated in both song and speech sessions. Results showed a positive event-related potential (ERP) familiarity effect to the final compared to the first target occurrences during both song and speech familiarization. No evidence was found for word recognition in the test phase following either song or speech. Comparisons across the stimuli of the present and a comparable previous study suggested that acoustic prominence and speech rate may have contributed to the polarity of the ERP familiarity effect and its absence in the test phase. Overall, the present study provides evidence that 10-month-old infants can segment words embedded in songs, and it raises questions about the acoustic and other factors that enable or hinder infant word segmentation from songs and speech

The NeuroDante Project: Neurometric measurements of participant’s reaction to literary auditory stimuli from dante’s “divina commedia”

Neurodante. Progetto di analisi neurometrica di alcuni brani della Commedi

Different theta connectivity patterns underlie pleasantness evoked by familiar and unfamiliar music

Music-evoked pleasantness has been extensively reported to be modulated by familiarity. Nevertheless, while the brain temporal dynamics underlying the process of giving value to music are beginning to be understood, little is known about how familiarity might modulate the oscillatory activity associated with music-evoked pleasantness. The goal of the present experiment was to study the influence of familiarity in the relation between theta phase synchronization and music-evoked pleasantness. EEG was recorded from 22 healthy participants while they were listening to both familiar and unfamiliar music and rating the experienced degree of evoked pleasantness. By exploring interactions, we found that right fronto-temporal theta synchronization was positively associated with music-evoked pleasantness when listening to unfamiliar music. On the contrary, inter-hemispheric temporo-parietal theta synchronization was positively associated with music-evoked pleasantness when listening to familiar music. These results shed some light on the possible oscillatory mechanisms underlying fronto-temporal and temporo-parietal connectivity and their relationship with music-evoked pleasantness and familiarity

Effects of musically-induced emotions on choice reaction time performance

The main objective of the current study was to examine the impact of musically-induced emotions on athletes’ subsequent choice reaction time (CRT) performance. A random sample of 54 tennis players listened to researcher-selected music whose tempo and intensity were modified to yield six different music excerpts (three tempi x two intensities) before completing a CRT task. Affective responses, heart rate (HR), and RTs for each condition were contrasted with white noise and silence conditions. As predicted, faster music tempi elicited more pleasant and aroused emotional states; and higher music intensity yielded both higher arousal (p < .001) and faster subsequent CRT performance (p < .001). White noise was judged significantly less pleasant than all experimental conditions (p < .001); and silence was significantly less arousing than all but one experimental condition (p < .001). The implications for athletes’ use of music as part of a preevent routine when preparing for reactive tasks are discussed

Rapid Brain Responses to Familiar vs. Unfamiliar Music – an EEG and Pupillometry study

Human listeners exhibit marked sensitivity to familiar music, perhaps most readily revealed by popular “name that tune” games, in which listeners often succeed in recognizing a familiar song based on extremely brief presentation. In this work, we used electroencephalography (EEG) and pupillometry to reveal the temporal signatures of the brain processes that allow differentiation between a familiar, well liked, and unfamiliar piece of music. In contrast to previous work, which has quantified gradual changes in pupil diameter (the so-called “pupil dilation response”), here we focus on the occurrence of pupil dilation events. This approach is substantially more sensitive in the temporal domain and allowed us to tap early activity with the putative salience network. Participants (N = 10) passively listened to snippets (750 ms) of a familiar, personally relevant and, an acoustically matched, unfamiliar song, presented in random order. A group of control participants (N = 12), who were unfamiliar with all of the songs, was also tested. We reveal a rapid differentiation between snippets from familiar and unfamiliar songs: Pupil responses showed greater dilation rate to familiar music from 100–300 ms post-stimulus-onset, consistent with a faster activation of the autonomic salience network. Brain responses measured with EEG showed a later differentiation between familiar and unfamiliar music from 350 ms post onset. Remarkably, the cluster pattern identified in the EEG response is very similar to that commonly found in the classic old/new memory retrieval paradigms, suggesting that the recognition of brief, randomly presented, music snippets, draws on similar processes

Infant EEG asymmetry differentiates between attractive and unattractive faces

textInfants prefer familiar adults (e.g. parents) to unfamiliar adults (e.g. strangers), but they also vary in which strangers they prefer. By 6-months, infants look longer at attractive than unattractive faces (e.g., Langlois et al., 1987); and by 12-months, infants show approach behaviors toward attractive strangers and withdrawal behaviors toward unattractive strangers (Langlois, Roggman, & Rieser-Danner, 1990). These preferences may be due to a mechanism referred to as cognitive averaging (e.g., Rubenstein, Kalakanis, & Langlois, 1999). Infants cognitively average face exemplars to form a face prototype. Infants likely perceive attractive faces as familiar because these faces are similar to the face prototype; and they likely perceive unattractive faces as especially novel because these face are dissimilar from the face prototype. Even young infants may be more motivated to approach attractive than unattractive faces but do not fully express this motivation due to limitations in locomotion and communication. I applied EEG asymmetry to study neural correlates of approach and withdrawal motivation in response to attractive and unattractive faces with 6- and 10-month-olds. More specifically, I measured EEG alpha power at mid-frontal regions while 39 infants viewed a series of attractive and unattractive faces. Left EEG asymmetry relates to approach motivation whereas right EEG asymmetry relates to withdrawal motivation. I predicted infants would show greater left EEG asymmetry (i.e., approach motivation) when viewing attractive faces than when viewing unattractive faces, and that 6-montholds would show even greater left asymmetry than 10-month-olds due to developmental differences in stranger wariness. Results supported the main hypothesis but not hypotheses regarding age. Infant EEG asymmetry was greater in response to attractive faces than unattractive faces suggesting that infants are more motivated to approach attractive people than unattractive people as early as 6-months. These results link visual preferences evident at 6-months to overt behaviors evident by 12-months providing additional information regarding rudiments of attractiveness stereotypes. Furthermore, this investigation supports the use of EEG asymmetry methodology to measure infant approach/withdrawal motivation, providing infant researchers one more tool to better understand how infants evaluate novel individuals in their social environment as they decide whom to approach and whom to avoid.Psycholog