Musicians and non-musicians show different preference profiles for single chords of varying harmonic complexity

The inverted U hypothesis in music predicts that listeners prefer intermediate levels of complexity. However, the shape of the liking response to harmonic complexity and the effect of musicianship remains unclear. Here, we tested whether the relationship between liking and harmonic complexity in single chords shows an inverted U shape and whether this U shape is different for musicians and non-musicians. We recorded these groups’ liking ratings for four levels of harmonic complexity, indexed by their level of acoustic roughness, as well as several measures of inter-individual difference. Results showed that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between harmonic complexity and liking in both musicians and non-musicians, but that the shape of the U is different for the two groups. Non-musicians’ U is more left-skewed, with peak liking for low harmonic complexity, while musicians’ U is more right-skewed, with highest ratings for medium and low complexity. Furthermore, musicians who showed greater liking for medium compared to low complexity chords reported higher levels of active musical engagement and higher levels of openness to experience. This suggests that a combination of practical musical experience and personality is reflected in musicians’ inverted U-shaped preference response to harmonic complexity in chords

Entrainment: A domain general cognitive timing mechanism?

From an early age onwards we tend to synchronize to temporally regular and rhythmic stimuli, such as the beat in music, which inevitably leads to movement. Recently, such basic mapping of temporally regular sound and motor behavior has been critically discussed and the four speakers of this symposium will address extensions of a basic sensorimotor conceptualization of entrainment in their talks. M. Henry and colleagues discuss oscillatory entrainment in perception only, while E. Large puts to test whether oscillatory entrainment simply mirrors stimulus frequency when movement is coupled with syncopated rhythm. J. Grahn explores whether non-beat related factors impact synchronization in movement, while S. Dalla-Bella confers how stimulus complexity affects people's capacity to synchronize finger tapping but also perception. The symposium will be discussed by V. Penhune

A Piano Training Program to Improve Manual Dexterity and Upper Extremity Function in Chronic Stroke Survivors

Objective: Music-supported therapy was shown to induce improvements in motor skills in stroke survivors. Whether all stroke individuals respond similarly to the intervention and whether gains can be maintained over time remain unknown. We estimated the immediate and retention effects of a piano training program on upper extremity function in persons with chronic stroke. Methods: Thirteen stroke participants engaged in a 3-week piano training comprising supervised sessions (9 × 60 min) and home practice. Fine and gross manual dexterity, movement coordination, and functional use of the upper extremity were assessed at baseline, pre-intervention, post-intervention, and at a 3-week follow-up. Results: Significant improvements were observed for all outcomes at post-intervention and follow-up compared to pre-intervention scores. Larger magnitudes of change in manual dexterity and functional use of the upper extremity were associated with higher initial levels of motor recovery. Conclusion: Piano training can result in sustainable improvements in upper extremity function in chronic stroke survivors. Individuals with a higher initial level of motor recovery at baseline appear to benefit the most from this intervention

Neuroimaging evidence implicating cerebellum in support of sensory/cognitive processes associated with thirst.

Recent studies implicate the cerebellum, long considered strictly a motor control structure, in cognitive, sensory, and affective phenomenon. The cerebellum, a phylogenetically ancient structure, has reciprocal ancient connections to the hypothalamus, a structure important in vegetative functions. The present study investigated whether the cerebellum was involved in vegetative functions and the primal emotions engendered by them. Using positron emission tomography, we examined the effects on the cerebellum of the rise of plasma sodium concentration and the emergence of thirst in 10 healthy adults. The correlation of regional cerebral blood flow with subjects' ratings of thirst showed major activation in the vermal central lobule. During the development of thirst, the anterior and posterior quadrangular lobule, lingula, and the vermis were activated. At maximum thirst and then during irrigation of the mouth with water to alleviate dryness, the cerebellum was less activated. However, 3 min after drinking to satiation, the anterior quadrangular lobule and posterior cerebellum were highly activated. The increased cerebellar activity was not related to motor behavior as this did not occur. Instead, responses in ancient cerebellar regions (vermis, fastigal nucleus, archicerebellum) may be more directly related to vegetative and affective aspects of thirst experiences, whereas activity in neocerebellar (posterior) regions may be related to sensory and cognitive aspects. Moreover, the cerebellum is apparently not involved in the computation of thirst per se but rather is activated during changes in thirst/satiation state when the brain is "vigilant" and is monitoring its sensory systems. Some neocerebellar activity may also reflect an intentionality for gratification by drinking inherent in the consciousness of thirst

Skill learning strengthens cortical representations of motor sequences.

Motor-skill learning can be accompanied by both increases and decreases in brain activity. Increases may indicate neural recruitment, while decreases may imply that a region became unimportant or developed a more efficient representation of the skill. These overlapping mechanisms make interpreting learning-related changes of spatially averaged activity difficult. Here we show that motor-skill acquisition is associated with the emergence of highly distinguishable activity patterns for trained movement sequences, in the absence of average activity increases. During functional magnetic resonance imaging, participants produced either four trained or four untrained finger sequences. Using multivariate pattern analysis, both untrained and trained sequences could be discriminated in primary and secondary motor areas. However, trained sequences were classified more reliably, especially in the supplementary motor area. Our results indicate skill learning leads to the development of specialized neuronal circuits, which allow the execution of fast and accurate sequential movements without average increases in brain activity. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.00801.001

Auditory prediction cues motor preparation in the absence of movements

There is increasing evidence for integrated representation of sensory and motor information in the brain, and that seeing or hearing action-related stimuli may automatically cue the movements required to respond to or produce them. In this study we tested whether anticipation of tones in a known melody automatically activates corresponding motor representations in a predictive way, in preparation for potential upcoming movements. Therefore, we trained 20 non-musicians (8 men, 12 women) to play a simple melody. Then, while they passively listened to the learned or unlearned melodies, we applied single pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over M1 to measure motor evoked potentials from the associated finger muscle either preceding or following the onset of individual tones. Our results show that listening to the learned melody increased corticospinal excitability for specific finger muscles before tone onset. This demonstrates that predictable auditory information can activate motor representations in an anticipatory muscle-specific manner, even in the absence of intention to move. This suggests that the motor system is involved in the prediction of sensory events, likely based on auditory-parietal-prefrontal feedforward/feedback loops that automatically prepare predictable sound-related actions independent of actual execution and the associated auditory feedback. Overall, we propose that multimodal forward models of upcoming sounds and actions support motor preparation, facilitate error detection and correction, and guide perception

Rhythm and Melody Tasks for School-Aged Children With and Without Musical Training: Age-Equivalent Scores and Reliability

Measuring musical abilities in childhood can be challenging. When music training and maturation occur simultaneously, it is difficult to separate the effects of specific experience from age-based changes in cognitive and motor abilities. The goal of this study was to develop age-equivalent scores for two measures of musical ability that could be reliably used with school-aged children (7–13) with and without musical training. The children's Rhythm Synchronization Task (c-RST) and the children's Melody Discrimination Task (c-MDT) were adapted from adult tasks developed and used in our laboratories. The c-RST is a motor task in which children listen and then try to synchronize their taps with the notes of a woodblock rhythm while it plays twice in a row. The c-MDT is a perceptual task in which the child listens to two melodies and decides if the second was the same or different. We administered these tasks to 213 children in music camps (musicians, n = 130) and science camps (non-musicians, n = 83). We also measured children's paced tapping, non-paced tapping, and phonemic discrimination as baseline motor and auditory abilities We estimated internal-consistency reliability for both tasks, and compared children's performance to results from studies with adults. As expected, musically trained children outperformed those without music lessons, scores decreased as difficulty increased, and older children performed the best. Using non-musicians as a reference group, we generated a set of age-based z-scores, and used them to predict task performance with additional years of training. Years of lessons significantly predicted performance on both tasks, over and above the effect of age. We also assessed the relation between musician's scores on music tasks, baseline tasks, auditory working memory, and non-verbal reasoning. Unexpectedly, musician children outperformed non-musicians in two of three baseline tasks. The c-RST and c-MDT fill an important need for researchers interested in evaluating the impact of musical training in longitudinal studies, those interested in comparing the efficacy of different training methods, and for those assessing the impact of training on non-musical cognitive abilities such as language processing

Melodic Priming of Motor Sequence Performance:The Role of the Dorsal Premotor Cortex

The purpose of this study was to determine whether exposure to specific auditory sequences leads to the induction of new motor memories and to investigate the role of the dorsal premotor cortex (dPMC) in this crossmodal learning process. Fifty-two young healthy non-musicians were familiarized with the sound to key-press mapping on a computer keyboard and tested on their baseline motor performance. Each participant received subsequently either continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) or sham stimulation over the dPMC and was then asked to remember a 12-note melody without moving. For half of the participants, the contour of the melody memorized was congruent to a subsequently performed, but never practiced, finger movement sequence (Congruent group). For the other half, the melody memorized was incongruent to the subsequent finger movement sequence (Incongruent group). Hearing a congruent melody led to significantly faster performance of a motor sequence immediately thereafter compared to hearing an incongruent melody. In addition, cTBS speeded up motor performance in both groups, possibly by relieving motor consolidation from interference by the declarative melody memorization task. Our findings substantiate recent evidence that exposure to a movement-related tone sequence can induce specific, crossmodal encoding of a movement sequence representation. They further suggest that cTBS over the dPMC may enhance early offline procedural motor skill consolidation in cognitive states where motor consolidation would normally be disturbed by concurrent declarative memory processes. These findings may contribute to a better understanding of auditory-motor system interactions and have implications for the development of new motor rehabilitation approaches using sound and non-invasive brain stimulation as neuromodulatory tools

The sensation of groove is affected by the interaction of rhythmic and harmonic complexity

<div><p>The pleasurable desire to move to music, also known as groove, is modulated by rhythmic complexity. How the sensation of groove is influenced by other musical features, such as the harmonic complexity of individual chords, is less clear. To address this, we asked people with a range of musical experience to rate stimuli that varied in both rhythmic and harmonic complexity. Rhythm showed an inverted U-shaped relationship with ratings of pleasure and wanting to move, whereas medium and low complexity chords were rated similarly. Pleasure mediated the effect of harmony on wanting to move and high complexity chords attenuated the effect of rhythm on pleasure. We suggest that while rhythmic complexity is the primary driver, harmony, by altering emotional valence, modulates the attentional and temporal prediction processes that underlie rhythm perception. Investigation of the effects of musical training with both regression and group comparison showed that training increased the inverted U effect for harmony and rhythm, respectively. Taken together, this work provides important new information about how the prediction and entrainment processes involved in rhythm perception interact with musical pleasure.</p></div