67 research outputs found
Melodic and Rhythmic-Melodic Perception in Children with Specific Language Impairment
Language and music share many properties, with a particularly strong overlap
for prosody. Prosodic cues are generally regarded as crucial for language
acquisition. Previous research has indicated that children with SLI fail to
make use of these cues. As processing of prosodic information involves similar
skills to those required in music perception, we compared music perception
skills (melodic and rhythmic-melodic perception and melody recognition) in a
group of children with SLI (, five-year-olds) to two groups of controls,
either of comparable age (, five-year-olds) or of age closer to the children
with SLI in their language skills and about one year younger (, four-year-
olds). Children with SLI performed in most tasks below their age level, closer
matching the performance level of younger controls with similar language
skills. These data strengthen the view of a strong relation between language
acquisition and music processing. This might open a perspective for the
possible use of musical material in early diagnosis of SLI and of music in SLI
therapy
Cardiac Signatures of Personality
Background There are well-established relations between personality and the
heart, as evidenced by associations between negative emotions on the one hand,
and coronary heart disease or chronic heart failure on the other. However,
there are substantial gaps in our knowledge about relations between the heart
and personality in healthy individuals. Here, we investigated whether
amplitude patterns of the electrocardiogram (ECG) correlate with neurotisicm,
extraversion, agreeableness, warmth, positive emotion, and tender-mindedness
as measured with the Neuroticism-Extraversion-Openness (NEO) personality
inventory. Specifically, we investigated (a) whether a cardiac amplitude
measure that was previously reported to be related to flattened affectivity
(referred to as values) would explain variance of NEO scores, and (b) whether
correlations can be found between NEO scores and amplitudes of the ECG.
Methodology/Principal Findings NEO scores and rest ECGs were obtained from 425
healthy individuals. Neuroticism and positive emotion significantly differed
between individuals with high and low values. In addition, stepwise cross-
validated regressions indicated correlations between ECG amplitudes and (a)
agreeableness, as well as (b) positive emotion. Conclusions/Significance These
results are the first to demonstrate that ECG amplitude patterns provide
information about the personality of an individual as measured with NEO
personality scales and facets. These findings open new perspectives for a more
efficient personality assessment using cardiac measures, as well as for more
efficient risk-stratification and pre-clinical diagnosis of individuals at
risk for cardiac, affective and psychosomatic disorders
A Structural and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study
Studies addressing brain correlates of emotional personality have remained
sparse, despite the involvement of emotional personality in health and well-
being. This study investigates structural and functional brain correlates of
psychological and physiological measures related to emotional personality.
Psychological measures included neuroticism, extraversion, and agreeableness
scores, as assessed using a standard personality questionnaire. As a
physiological measure we used a cardiac amplitude signature, the so-called Eκ
value (computed from the electrocardiogram) which has previously been related
to tender emotionality. Questionnaire scores and Eκ values were related to
both functional (eigenvector centrality mapping, ECM) and structural (voxel-
based morphometry, VBM) neuroimaging data. Functional magnetic resonance
imaging (fMRI) data were obtained from 22 individuals (12 females) while
listening to music (joy, fear, or neutral music). ECM results showed that
agreeableness scores correlated with centrality values in the dorsolateral
prefrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex, and the ventral striatum
(nucleus accumbens). Individuals with higher Eκ values (indexing higher tender
emotionality) showed higher centrality values in the subiculum of the right
hippocampal formation. Structural MRI data from an independent sample of 59
individuals (34 females) showed that neuroticism scores correlated with volume
of the left amygdaloid complex. In addition, individuals with higher Eκ showed
larger gray matter volume in the same portion of the subiculum in which
individuals with higher Eκ showed higher centrality values. Our results
highlight a role of the amygdala in neuroticism. Moreover, they indicate that
a cardiac signature related to emotionality (Eκ) correlates with both function
(increased network centrality) and structure (grey matter volume) of the
subiculum of the hippocampal formation, suggesting a role of the hippocampal
formation for emotional personality. Results are the first to show
personality-related differences using eigenvector centrality mapping, and the
first to show structural brain differences for a physiological measure
associated with personality
Neural correlates of emotional personality:a structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging study
Studies addressing brain correlates of emotional personality have remained sparse, despite the involvement of emotional personality in health and well-being. This study investigates structural and functional brain correlates of psychological and physiological measures related to emotional personality. Psychological measures included neuroticism, extraversion, and agreeableness scores, as assessed using a standard personality questionnaire. As a physiological measure we used a cardiac amplitude signature, the so-called E κ value (computed from the electrocardiogram) which has previously been related to tender emotionality. Questionnaire scores and E κ values were related to both functional (eigenvector centrality mapping, ECM) and structural (voxel-based morphometry, VBM) neuroimaging data. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were obtained from 22 individuals (12 females) while listening to music (joy, fear, or neutral music). ECM results showed that agreeableness scores correlated with centrality values in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex, and the ventral striatum (nucleus accumbens). Individuals with higher E κ values (indexing higher tender emotionality) showed higher centrality values in the subiculum of the right hippocampal formation. Structural MRI data from an independent sample of 59 individuals (34 females) showed that neuroticism scores correlated with volume of the left amygdaloid complex. In addition, individuals with higher E κ showed larger gray matter volume in the same portion of the subiculum in which individuals with higher E κ showed higher centrality values. Our results highlight a role of the amygdala in neuroticism. Moreover, they indicate that a cardiac signature related to emotionality (E κ) correlates with both function (increased network centrality) and structure (grey matter volume) of the subiculum of the hippocampal formation, suggesting a role of the hippocampal formation for emotional personality. Results are the first to show personality-related differences using eigenvector centrality mapping, and the first to show structural brain differences for a physiological measure associated with personality
Unpredictability of the “when” influences prediction error processing of the “what” and “where”
The capability to establish accurate predictions is an integral part of learning. Whether predictions about different dimensions of a stimulus interact with each other, and whether such an interaction affects learning, has remained elusive. We conducted a statistical learning study with EEG (electroencephalography), where a stream of consecutive sound triplets was presented with deviants that were either: (a) statistical, depending on the triplet ending probability, (b) physical, due to a change in sound location or (c) double deviants, i.e. a combination of the two. We manipulated the predictability of stimulus-onset by using random stimulus-onset asynchronies. Temporal unpredictability due to random onsets reduced the neurophysiological responses to statistical and location deviants, as indexed by the statistical mismatch negativity (sMMN) and the location MMN. Our results demonstrate that the predictability of one stimulus attribute influences the processing of prediction error signals of other stimulus attributes, and thus also learning of those attributes.publishedVersio
Neural correlates of music-syntactic processing in two-year old children
Music is a basic and ubiquitous socio-cognitive domain. However, our understanding of the time course of the development of music perception, particularly regarding implicit knowledge of music-syntactic regularities, remains contradictory and incomplete. Some authors assume that the acquisition of knowledge about these regularities lasts until late childhood, but there is also evidence for the presence of such knowledge in four- and five-year-olds. To explore whether such knowledge is already present in younger children, we tested whether 30-month-olds (N=62) show neurophysiological responses to music-syntactically irregular harmonies. We observed an early right anterior negativity in response to both irregular in-key and out-of-key chords. The N5, a brain response usually present in older children and adults, was not observed, indicating that processes of harmonic integration (as reflected in the N5) are still in development in this age group. In conclusion, our results indicate that 30-month-olds already have acquired implicit knowledge of complex harmonic music-syntactic regularities and process musical information according to this knowledge
A statistical MMN reflects the magnitude of transitional probabilities in auditory sequences
Within the framework of statistical learning, many behavioural studies
investigated the processing of unpredicted events. However, surprisingly few
neurophysiological studies are available on this topic, and no statistical
learning experiment has investigated electroencephalographic (EEG) correlates
of processing events with different transition probabilities. We carried out
an EEG study with a novel variant of the established statistical learning
paradigm. Timbres were presented in isochronous sequences of triplets. The
first two sounds of all triplets were equiprobable, while the third sound
occurred with either low (10%), intermediate (30%), or high (60%) probability.
Thus, the occurrence probability of the third item of each triplet (given the
first two items) was varied. Compared to high-probability triplet endings,
endings with low and intermediate probability elicited an early anterior
negativity that had an onset around 100 ms and was maximal at around 180 ms.
This effect was larger for events with low than for events with intermediate
probability. Our results reveal that, when predictions are based on
statistical learning, events that do not match a prediction evoke an early
anterior negativity, with the amplitude of this mismatch response being
inversely related to the probability of such events. Thus, we report a
statistical mismatch negativity (sMMN) that reflects statistical learning of
transitional probability distributions that go beyond auditory sensory memory
capabilities
Heroic music stimulates empowering thoughts during mind-wandering
It is generally well-known, and scientifically well established, that music affects emotions and moods. However, only little is known about the influence of music on thoughts. This scarcity is particularly surprising given the importance of the valence of thoughts for psychological health and well-being. We presented excerpts of heroic- and sad-sounding music to n = 62 individuals, and collected thought probes after each excerpt, assessing the valence and the nature of thoughts stimulated by the music. Our results show that mind-wandering emerged during listening to either type of music (heroic, sad), and that the type of music strongly influenced the thought contents during mind-wandering. Heroic-sounding music evoked more positive, exciting, constructive, and motivating thoughts, while sad-sounding music evoked more calm or demotivating thoughts. The results thus indicate that music has a strong effect on the valence of thought contents during mind-wandering, with heroic music evoking more empowering and motivating thoughts, and sad music more relaxing or depressive thoughts. These findings have important implications for the use of music in everyday life to promote health and well-being in both clinical populations and healthy individuals.publishedVersio
Neocortical substrates of feelings evoked with music in the ACC, insula, and somatosensory cortex
Neurobiological models of emotion focus traditionally on limbic/paralimbic regions as neural substrates of emotion generation, and insular cortex (in conjunction with isocortical anterior cingulate cortex, ACC) as the neural substrate of feelings. An emerging view, however, highlights the importance of isocortical regions beyond insula and ACC for the subjective feeling of emotions. We used music to evoke feelings of joy and fear, and multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) to decode representations of feeling states in functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) data of n = 24 participants. Most of the brain regions providing information about feeling representations were neocortical regions. These included, in addition to granular insula and cingulate cortex, primary and secondary somatosensory cortex, premotor cortex, frontal operculum, and auditory cortex. The multivoxel activity patterns corresponding to feeling representations emerged within a few seconds, gained in strength with increasing stimulus duration, and replicated results of a hypothesis-generating decoding analysis from an independent experiment. Our results indicate that several neocortical regions (including insula, cingulate, somatosensory and premotor cortices) are important for the generation and modulation of feeling states. We propose that secondary somatosensory cortex, which covers the parietal operculum and encroaches on the posterior insula, is of particular importance for the encoding of emotion percepts, i.e., preverbal representations of subjective feeling.publishedVersio
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