Sensory auditory processing and intuitive sound detection : an investigation of musical experts and nonexperts

The auditory system can detect occasional changes (deviants) in acoustic regularities without the need for subjects to focus their attention on the sound material. Deviant detection is reflected in the elicitation of the mismatch negativity component (MMN) of the event-related potentials. In the studies presented in this thesis, the MMN is used to investigate the auditory abilities for detecting similarities and regularities in sound streams. To investigate the limits of these processes, professional musicians have been tested in some of the studies. The results show that auditory grouping is already more advanced in musicians than in nonmusicians and that the auditory system of musicians can, unlike that of nonmusicians, detect a numerical regularity of always four tones in a series. These results suggest that sensory auditory processing in musicians is not only a fine tuning of universal abilities, but is also qualitatively more advanced than in nonmusicians. In addition, the relationship between the auditory change-detection function and perception is examined. It is shown that, contrary to the generally accepted view, MMN elicitation does not necessarily correlate with perception. The outcome of the auditory change-detection function can be implicit and the implicit knowledge of the sound structure can, after training, be utilized for behaviorally correct intuitive sound detection. These results illustrate the automatic character of the sensory change detection function.Kuulojärjestelmä analysoi akustisia tapahtumia jäsentääkseen meitä ympäröiviä ääniä. Kuulohavaintoon liittyvät kyvyt eivät ole staattisia, vaan niitä voidaan muokata harjoittelulla. Esimerkiksi viulisti pystyy erottamaan paljon pienempiä sävelkorkeuseroja kuin joku, jonka korva ei ole samalla tavalla kehittynyt harjoittelussa. Tästä syystä muusikot ovat mielenkiintoinen kohderyhmä kuulohavaintoon liittyvien kykyjen tutkimuksessa. Osa kuuloprosesseista tapahtuu automaattisesti, vaikka emme ole edes aina tietoisia meitä ympäröivistä äänistä. Joskus emme tarkkaile ääntä kuinnes se yhtäkkiä muuttuu. Toisinaan taas emme ole täysin tietoisia äänen muutostakaan, mutta tarkoittaako tämä sitä, että se ei voi vaikuttaa toimintaamme? Tämän väitöskirjan tutkimuksissa aivosähkökäyrää eli EEG:tä mitattiin pään pinnalle kiinnitetyistä elektrodeista. EEG:llä mitatuista sähkökentistä voidaan päätellä, milloin kuulojärjestelmä on löytänyt satunnaisen muutoksen äänisarjassa, joka on muuten säännöllinen. Tämä ilmenee negatiivisena heilahduksena, jota kutsutaan MMN-vasteeksi (engl. mismatch negativity). MMN-vaste syntyy, vaikka koehenkilöt eivät tarkkailisi ääniärsykkeitä, ja tästä syystä sitä voidaan käyttää kuulojärjestelmässä automaattisesti tapahtuvan äänten käsittelyn tutkimiseen. Havaitsemme merkitystä yhdistämällä samankaltaisia ääniä ja erottamalla niitä erilaisista äänistä. Tätä kutsutaan ryhmittelyksi. Tämän väitöskirjan tulosten mukaan kuuloaineiston ryhmittelytoiminto on kehittyneempi muusikoilla kuin muilla. Väitöskirjassa myös näytetään, että muusikoiden löytää neljän äänen säännönmukaisu uden muille merkityksettöm ästä äänisarjasta. Tämä viittaa siihen, että osa kuuloprosesseista, joita käytetään musiikin jäsentämiseen, on automatisoitunut muusikoilla. Tämä on hyödyllistä prosessointiresurssien kannalta, sillä näin niitä jää korkeampien toimintojen käyttöön. Tämän väitöskirjan viimeisessä tutkimuksessa tarkasteltiin automaattisen poikkeavuuden käsittelyn ja tietoisen havaitsemisen suhdetta. Tutkimus osoitti, että MMN-vasteen syntyminen ei välttämättä satu yhteen tietoisen havainnon kanssa. Vaikka aivot löysivät satunnaiset muutokset ääniärsykkeissä, koehenkilöt eivät tietoisesti havainneet muutoksia. Ero sen välillä, mitä aivot käsittelivät ja mitä ihmiset tietoisella tasolla havaitsivat, osoittaa, että koehenkilöillä oli implisiittistä tietoa äänten rakenteesta. Kun koehenkilöitä sitten harjoitettiin kuulemaan muutoksia esittämällä yhtäaikaisesti visuaalinen vihje, puolet heistä oppi löytämään satunnaiset muutokset, pystymättä kuitenkaan kertomaan, miten ne erosivat muista äänistä. Toisin sanoen, he pystyivät löytämään poikkeamat intuitiivisesti. Tulokset osoittavat, että implisiittistä tietoa voidaan hyödyntää oikeiden intuitiivisten päätösten tekemisessä

First records of Chrysotoxum volaticum Séguy, 1961 from Europe and Platycheirus marokkanus Kassebeer, 1998 from Spain (Diptera: Syrphidae) together with additional records of Spanish Chrysotoxum Meigen, 1803

The first European records of Chrysotoxum volaticum Séguy, 1961 from Spain and France, and Platycheirus marokkanus Kassebeer, 1998 from Spain are provided. These are further examples of North African species also present in the Iberian Peninsula. Diagnostic characters are given to separate C. volaticum and the similar Chrysotoxum bicinctum (Linnaeus, 1758), and additional records of other Chrysotoxum Meigen, 1803 hoverflies from Spain are also reported. We also provide DNA barcodes for C. volaticum and discuss the utility of DNA barcoding to identify species in the genus Chrysotoxum.The study of the material of Chrysotoxum in the NHM was made possible by receiving support from the SYNTHESYS project http://www.synthesys.info/ which is financed by European Community Research Infrastructure Action under the FP6 “Structuring the European Research Area” Programme. Financial support was also provided by the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (projects CGL2005-07213/BOS and CGL2006-13847-C02-01). Antonio Ricarte’s position (Ref. UATAL05) at the University of Alicante is funded by the ‘Vicerrectorado de Investigación y Transferencia de Conocimiento’

A multigene phylogeny of the eristaline flower flies (Diptera : Syrphidae), with emphasis on the subtribe Criorhinina

We present the first multigene phylogeny focused on Eristalinae (Diptera: Syrphidae) utilizing a dataset containing 120 flower fly species from across all four subfamilies and representing 13 out of 16 tribes. Eight genes were used in the construction of the phylogeny: mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I and the nuclear genes 28S ribosomal DNA, Alanylt RNA Synthetase, the carbamoyl phosphate synthase domain of CAD, Period, RNA-binding Protein 15 (RBP-15, 5'), Casein Kinase 1 and TULP for a total of similar to 6.7 kB of data. Eristalinae is recovered as paraphyletic with strong support for the elevation of Cerioidini, Merodontini and Volucellini to subfamilial status. Deineches, Flukea and Malometasternum render Criorhinina paraphyletic with respect to the type genus Criorhina. A clade with Criorhina, Matsumyia and Sphecomyia is strongly supported. The generic concept of Criorhina is paraphyletic, while Sphecomyia is monophyletic and Matsumyia is monophyletic but requires expansion. Evidence supports the resurrection of Romaleosyrphus and the creation of new genera. Criorhinina (stat. rev.) is restricted to contain Criorhina, Matsumyia, Romaleosyrphus and Sphecomyia. Thirteen changes to the higher classification of Syrphidae are proposed.Peer reviewe

Underlying Skills of Oral and Silent Reading Fluency in Chinese: Perspective of Visual Rapid Processing

Reading fluency is a critical skill to improve the quality of our daily life and working efficiency. The majority of previous studies focused on oral reading fluency rather than silent reading fluency, which is a much more dominant reading mode that is used in middle and high school and for leisure reading. It is still unclear whether the oral and silent reading fluency involved the same underlying skills. To address this issue, the present study examined the relationship between the visual rapid processing and Chinese reading fluency in different modes. Fifty-eight undergraduate students took part in the experiment. The phantom contour paradigm and the visual 1-back task were adopted to measure the visual rapid temporal and simultaneous processing respectively. These two tasks reflected the temporal and spatial dimensions of visual rapid processing separately. We recorded the temporal threshold in the phantom contour task, as well as reaction time and accuracy in the visual 1-back task. Reading fluency was measured in both single-character and sentence levels. Fluent reading of single characters was assessed with a paper-and-pencil lexical decision task, and a sentence verification task was developed to examine reading fluency on a sentence level. The reading fluency test in each level was conducted twice (i.e., oral reading and silent reading). Reading speed and accuracy were recorded. The correlation analysis showed that the temporal threshold in the phantom contour task did not correlate with the scores of the reading fluency tests. Although, the reaction time in visual 1-back task correlated with the reading speed of both oral and silent reading fluency, the comparison of the correlation coefficients revealed a closer relationship between the visual rapid simultaneous processing and silent reading. Furthermore, the visual rapid simultaneous processing exhibited a significant contribution to reading fluency in silent mode but not in oral reading mode. These findings suggest that the underlying mechanism between oral and silent reading fluency is different at the beginning of the basic visual coding. The current results also might reveal a potential modulation of the language characteristics of Chinese on the relationship between visual rapid processing and reading fluency

The tumor suppressor MIR139 is silenced by POLR2M to promote AML oncogenesis

MIR139 is a tumor suppressor and is commonly silenced in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). However, the tumor-suppressing activities of miR-139 and molecular mechanisms of MIR139-silencing remain largely unknown. Here, we studied the poorly prognostic MLL-AF9 fusion protein-expressing AML. We show that MLL-AF9 expression in hematopoietic precursors caused epigenetic silencing of MIR139, whereas overexpression of MIR139 inhibited in vitro and in vivo AML outgrowth. We identified novel miR-139 targets that mediate the tumor-suppressing activities of miR-139 in MLL-AF9 AML. We revealed that two enhancer regions control MIR139 expression and found that the polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2) downstream of MLL-AF9 epigenetically silenced MIR139 in AML. Finally, a genome-wide CRISPR-Cas9 knockout screen revealed RNA Polymerase 2 Subunit M (POLR2M) as a novel MIR139-regulatory factor. Our findings elucidate the molecular control of tumor suppressor MIR139 and reveal a role for POLR2M in the MIR139-silencing mechanism, downstream of MLL-AF9 and PRC2 in AML. In addition, we confirmed these findings in human AML cell lines with different oncogenic aberrations, suggesting that this is a more common oncogenic mechanism in AML. Our results may pave the way for new targeted therapy in AML.Proteomic

Electromagnetic Correlates of Musical Expertise in Processing of Tone Patterns

Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we investigated the influence of long term musical training on the processing of partly imagined tone patterns (imagery condition) compared to the same perceived patterns (perceptual condition). The magnetic counterpart of the mismatch negativity (MMNm) was recorded and compared between musicians and non-musicians in order to assess the effect of musical training on the detection of deviants to tone patterns. The results indicated a clear MMNm in the perceptual condition as well as in a simple pitch oddball (control) condition in both groups. However, there was no significant mismatch response in either group in the imagery condition despite above chance behavioral performance in the task of detecting deviant tones. The latency and the laterality of the MMNm in the perceptual condition differed significantly between groups, with an earlier MMNm in musicians, especially in the left hemisphere. In contrast the MMNm amplitudes did not differ significantly between groups. The behavioral results revealed a clear effect of long-term musical training in both experimental conditions. The obtained results represent new evidence that the processing of tone patterns is faster and more strongly lateralized in musically trained subjects, which is consistent with other findings in different paradigms of enhanced auditory neural system functioning due to long-term musical training

Processing of Abstract Rule Violations in Audition

The ability to encode rules and to detect rule-violating events outside the focus of attention is vital for adaptive behavior. Our brain recordings reveal that violations of abstract auditory rules are processed even when the sounds are unattended. When subjects performed a task related to the sounds but not to the rule, rule violations impaired task performance and activated a network involving supratemporal, parietal and frontal areas although none of the subjects acquired explicit knowledge of the rule or became aware of rule violations. When subjects tried to behaviorally detect rule violations, the brain's automatic violation detection facilitated intentional detection. This shows the brain's capacity for abstraction – an important cognitive function necessary to model the world. Our study provides the first evidence for the task-independence (i.e. automaticity) of this ability to encode abstract rules and for its immediate consequences for subsequent mental processes