Neural Responses to Complex Auditory Rhythms: The Role of Attending

The aim of this study was to explore the role of attention in pulse and meter perception using complex rhythms. We used a selective attention paradigm in which participants attended to either a complex auditory rhythm or a visually presented word list. Performance on a reproduction task was used to gauge whether participants were attending to the appropriate stimulus. We hypothesized that attention to complex rhythms – which contain no energy at the pulse frequency – would lead to activations in motor areas involved in pulse perception. Moreover, because multiple repetitions of a complex rhythm are needed to perceive a pulse, activations in pulse-related areas would be seen only after sufficient time had elapsed for pulse perception to develop. Selective attention was also expected to modulate activity in sensory areas specific to the modality. We found that selective attention to rhythms led to increased BOLD responses in basal ganglia, and basal ganglia activity was observed only after the rhythms had cycled enough times for a stable pulse percept to develop. These observations suggest that attention is needed to recruit motor activations associated with the perception of pulse in complex rhythms. Moreover, attention to the auditory stimulus enhanced activity in an attentional sensory network including primary auditory cortex, insula, anterior cingulate, and prefrontal cortex, and suppressed activity in sensory areas associated with attending to the visual stimulus

Directing Modernist Spirituality: Evelyn Underhill, the Subliminal Consciousness and Spiritual Direction

Outlining an alternative trajectory for modernist spirituality to that traced in Pericles Lewis’s 'Religious Experience and the Modernist Novel' (2010), I argue that modernist religious thought, far from playing heir to the long march of secularization, was in fact conditioned by a late-nineteenth-century cultural crisis that issued in a range of religious experiments and renewals, one of which was Evelyn Underhill’s 'Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness' (1911), a text that not only brought together mystical traditions and scientific discoveries, but also used this interdisciplinary remit to counter existing secularizing perspectives. An important dimension of Underhill’s work was its collaborative nature; it offers, I argue, not access to rarefied enlightenment, but rather a bold attempt to navigate a treacherous religious landscape

Dynamic Emotional and Neural Responses to Music Depend on Performance Expression and Listener Experience

Apart from its natural relevance to cognition, music provides a window into the intimate relationships between production, perception, experience, and emotion. Here, emotional responses and neural activity were observed as they evolved together with stimulus parameters over several minutes. Participants listened to a skilled music performance that included the natural fluctuations in timing and sound intensity that musicians use to evoke emotional responses. A mechanical performance of the same piece served as a control. Before and after fMRI scanning, participants reported real-time emotional responses on a 2-dimensional rating scale (arousal and valence) as they listened to each performance. During fMRI scanning, participants listened without reporting emotional responses. Limbic and paralimbic brain areas responded to the expressive dynamics of human music performance, and both emotion and reward related activations during music listening were dependent upon musical training. Moreover, dynamic changes in timing predicted ratings of emotional arousal, as well as real-time changes in neural activity. BOLD signal changes correlated with expressive timing fluctuations in cortical and subcortical motor areas consistent with pulse perception, and in a network consistent with the human mirror neuron system. These findings show that expressive music performance evokes emotion and reward related neural activations, and that music's affective impact on the brains of listeners is altered by musical training. Our observations are consistent with the idea that music performance evokes an emotional response through a form of empathy that is based, at least in part, on the perception of movement and on violations of pulse-based temporal expectancies

Neural indices of behavioral instability in coordination dynamics

Meeting on Coordination - Neural, Behavioral and Social Dynamics held in honor of JA Scott Kelso, Boca Raton, FL, FEB, 2007International audienceno abstrac

Neuroimaging coordination dynamics in the sport sciences

International audienceKey methodological issues for designing, analyzing, and interpreting neuroimaging experiments are presented from the perspective of the framework of Coordination Dynamics. To this end, a brief overview of Coordination Dynamics is introduced, including the main concepts of control parameters and collective variables, theoretical modeling, novel experimental paradigms, and cardinal empirical findings. Basic conceptual and methodological issues for the design and implementation of coordination experiments in the context of neuroimaging are discussed. The paper concludes with a presentation of neuroimaging findings central to understanding the neural basis of coordination and addresses their relevance for the sport sciences. The latter include but are not restricted to learning and practice-related issues, the role of mental imagery, and the recovery of function following brain injury. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Thatcherization impacts the processing of own-race faces more so than other-race faces: an ERP study

It has been suggested that differential use of configural processing strategies may underlie racially based recognition deficits (known as the “other-race effect”). By employing a well-known configural manipulation (Thatcherization, i.e., rotating the eyes and mouth by 180◦), we aimed to demonstrate, electrophysiologically, that configural processing is used to a greater extent when viewing same-race faces than when viewing other-race faces. Face-related event-related potential (ERP) responses were measured for participants viewing normal and Thatcherized faces of their own race (Caucasian) and of another race (African-American). The P1 and N170 com- ponents were modulated to a greater extent by Thatcherization for same-race faces, suggesting that the processing of these faces is, in fact, more reliant on configural information than other-race faces. Thatcherization also affected the P250 component more so for same-race faces independently of orientation. The race-dependent effects of Thatcherization as early as P1 suggest that configural encoding may be occurring much earlier than the well-cited N170

Dynamiques comportementale et cérébrale des coordinations sensorimotrices : (in)stabilité et métastabilité

Depuis plus de deux décennies, la théorie des systèmes dynamiques a permis de considérer sous un jour nouveau les liens entre les coordinations sensorimotrices chez l'humain et la dynamique cérébrale qui leur est associée. De multiples travaux dans des domaines aussi variés que les coordinations bimanuelles, posturales, interpersonnelles, ou encore les coordinations entre un individu et son environnement ont montré que le comportement, la cognition et le cerveau humains sont fonctionnellement sous-tendus par la théorie des systèmes dynamiques non linéaires. Dans cette revue de la littérature, nous présentons un ensemble de travaux conduits autour de la réalisation de deux patrons de coordination rythmique : la synchronisation (coordonner un mouvement sur chaque événement d'une stimulation) et la syncopation (coordonner un mouvement entre deux événements d'une stimulation). A des fréquences de mouvement supérieures à 2 Hz, la syncopation devient impossible et l'on adopte spontanément la synchronisation. Ce changement abrupt entre syncopation et synchronisation révèle une réorganisation comportementale qualifiée de transition de phase (loin de l'équilibre). Il permet l'étude opérationnelle de l'adoption spontanée (et de l'abandon) de patrons de coordination aux niveaux comportemental (cinématique) et cérébral. Les nouvelles techniques d'imagerie cérébrale fonctionnelle (EEG, MEG et IRMf) ont récemment permis de mettre en évidence la signature de cette différence de stabilité comportementale au niveau de l'activité du cerveau, et indiquent que son fonctionnement est lui aussi sous-tendu par le principe d'autoorganisation. Les liens entre dynamiques comportementale et cérébrale peuvent donc être abordés au sein d'un cadre expérimental et théorique unifié afin de mieux comprendre le caractère métastable du cerveau humain, à savoir ses propriétés d'intégration (globale) et de ségrégation (locale)