Electrical Neuroimaging of Music Processing in Pianists With and Without True Absolute Pitch

True absolute pitch (AP), labeling of pitches with semitone precision without a reference, is classically studied using isolated tones. However, AP is acquired and has its function within complex dynamic musical contexts. Here we examined event-related brain responses and underlying cerebral sources to endings of short expressive string quartets, investigating a homogeneous population of young highly trained pianists with half of them possessing true-AP. The pieces ended regularly or contained harmonic transgressions at closure that participants appraised. Given the millisecond precision of ERP analyses, this experimental plan allowed examining whether AP alters music processing at an early perceptual, or later cognitive level, or both, and which cerebral sources underlie differences with non-AP musicians. We also investigated the impact of AP on general auditory cognition. Remarkably, harmonic transgression sensitivity did not differ between AP and non-AP participants, and differences for auditory cognition were only marginal. The key finding of this study is the involvement of a microstate peaking around 60 ms after musical closure, characterizing AP participants. Concurring sources were estimated in secondary auditory areas, comprising the planum temporale, all transgression conditions collapsed. These results suggest that AP is not a panacea to become a proficient musician, but a rare perceptual feature

Integration between emotions and actions

Different parts of our brain code the perceptual features and actions related to an object, causing a binding problem, in which the brain has to integrate information related to an event without any interference regarding the features and actions involved in other concurrently processed events. Using a paradigm similar to Hommel, who proposed the event file concept, we were interested in the present thesis in the role played by emotions in the event file. Experiments 1-5 established the existence of the emotion-action binding with task-relevant and irrelevant visual emotional stimuli. Experiments 6-9 reproduced these results with emotional prosodies. With Experiment 10-11, we went further on the phenomenon by considering timing of presentation's influence in the integration of emotional stimuli with motor actions. Finally, Experiment 12 investigated the neural underpinnings of this binding using the functional magnetic resonance imaging method

Des parties supérieures et inférieures d'expressions faciales schématiques de colère capturent-elles l'attention lors d'une tâche de recherche visuelle ?

De nombreuses études ont montré que des expressions faciales de colère étaient détectées plus rapidement que des visages de joie quand ils étaient la cible de la recherche visuelle, un effet appelé : « anger superiority effect ». Cependant, Weymar et collaborateurs (2011) ont été parmi les premiers à étudier le déplacement attentionnel en direction de ces stimuli avec la mesure neurophysiologique, N2pc. La colère attirait effectivement plus l’attention que la joie. Connaissant ce résultat, nous avons mené une première étude pour voir si le même effet était obtenu avec des visages distracteurs. Seule la colère entraînait une N2pc significative, nous incitant à étudier cette émotion de plus près. Dans la présente expérience, nous voulions savoir si des éléments de visages de colère distracteurs attiraient l’attention, et quelle partie, supérieure ou inférieure, jouait le rôle le plus important dans ces effets. Nos résultats dévoilent que ces derniers ne capturent pas l’attention, mais la partie haute, en général, montre une N2pc plus intense..

Visuomotor integration of relevant and irrelevant angry and fearful facial expressions

Our brain codes the features of perceptual events in a distributed fashion, raising the question of how information belonging to one event is processed without any interference of features from other events. Hommel (1998) suggested the "event file" concept to elucidate these mechanisms: an episodic memory trace "binding" together perceptual features and actions related to an object. Using a similar paradigm, we designed a pilot experiment and four additional experiments to investigate whether emotion, similarly than perceptual features, could bind with a motor response when the emotion was relevant and irrelevant for the task. Few studies have revealed this to be the case. We investigated how angry and fearful faces expressed by avatars and humans might be subject to a binding phenomenon. Our results show that at least three degrees of visuomotor binding seem to coexist: one implicating the relevant feature of the task with a strong effect on behavior, another implicating the location with a smaller behavioral effect (even if not task related), and a third implicating non-task-related features with behavioral effects only under specific conditions in which emotion could play a role. Our adaptation of Hommel's paradigm showed that emotional percepts can be subject to visuomotor binding effects even if the emotion is not task related confirming the important role of emotional information for the central nervous system. These findings offer new perspective in the investigation of the emotion-action binding at the neuronal level

Audiomotor integration of angry and happy prosodies

Different parts of our brain code the perceptual features and actions related to an object, causing a binding problem: how does the brain discriminate the information of a particular event from the features of other events? Hommel (1998) suggested the event file concept: an episodic memory trace binding perceptual and motor information pertaining to an object. By adapting Hommel's paradigm to emotional faces in a previous study (Coll & Grandjean, 2016), we demonstrated that emotion could take part in an event file with motor responses. We also postulate such binding to occur with emotional prosodies, due to an equal importance of automatic reactions to such events. However, contrary to static emotional expressions, prosodies develop through time and temporal dynamics may influence the integration of these stimuli. To investigate this effect, we developed three studies with task-relevant and -irrelevant emotional prosodies. Our results showed that emotion could interact with motor responses when it was task relevant. When it was task irrelevant, this integration was also observed, but only when participants were led to focus on the details of the voices, that is, in a loudness task. No such binding was observed when participants performed a location task, in which emotion could be ignored. These results indicate that emotional binding is not restricted to visual information but is a general phenomenon allowing organisms to integrate emotion and action in an efficient and adaptive way. We discuss the influence of temporal dynamics in the emotion action binding and the implication of Hommel's paradigm

Timing is crucial for the integration of angry facial expressions with motor responses: Investigation of subliminal and supraliminal emotion–action bindings

Our brain codes perceptual features and actions in a distributed fashion, causing a binding problem: How does the brain recognize that information pertains to a specific object and not to other concurrently processed objects? Hommel (1998) suggested the event file concept: An episodic memory trace binding perceptual features and actions related to an event. By adapting Hommel's paradigm to emotional faces in a previous series of studies (Coll & Grandjean, 2016), we revealed that emotion could take part in an event file with motor responses when emotion is task relevant and in specific situations when emotion is task irrelevant. In the latter case, we supposed that such integration occurs because of the importance of emotion–action coupling for our survival, even when the task is not specifically related to emotion. To date, emotion–action binding has been studied only with faces presented for 500 ms. In continuation with the hypothesis that humans developed adaptive mechanisms to allow fast responses to emotions, we designed 2 experiments to investigate the influence of the duration of angry and neutral face presentation on binding with motor responses. Results showed that emotion–action integration was possible in a 100-, 250-, and 500-ms presentation, but not when the faces were subliminally (14 ms) or supraliminally (28 ms) displayed. Timing is crucial in emotion–action binding, and although reaction to emotional stimuli might take place rapidly, its integration, as shown by the present studies, seems to require at least 100 ms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c

Electrophysiological evidence for attentional capture by irrelevant angry facial expressions

Attention is believed to be biased toward threatening objects or faces. Therefore, we tested whether angry face stimuli would capture attention even when they are irrelevant to the task. Observers searched for a neutral face with a tilted nose. On some trials, the target was shown together with an irrelevant angry or happy face and we measured the N2pc (an electrophysiological marker of attentional selectivity) to the distractor expression. We found that angry distractors triggered an N2pc, whereas happy distractors did not. Follow-up experiments explored the reliability of the N2pc to angry distractors using upright or inverted angry faces, the eye or mouth region of angry faces and face-like stimuli. We conclude that a threatening expression has a high attentional priority due to its emotional content and captures attention despite being irrelevant for the task

The behavioral and neural binding phenomena during visuomotor integration of angry facial expressions

Different parts of our brain code the perceptual features and actions related to an object, causing a binding problem, in which the brain has to integrate information related to an event without any interference regarding the features and actions involved in other concurrently processed events. Using a paradigm similar to Hommel, who revealed perception-action bindings, we showed that emotion could bind with motor actions when relevant, and in specific conditions, irrelevant for the task. By adapting our protocol to a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging paradigm we investigated, in the present study, the neural bases of the emotion-action binding with task-relevant angry faces. Our results showed that emotion bound with motor responses. This integration revealed increased activity in distributed brain areas involved in: (i) memory, including the hippocampi; (ii) motor actions with the precentral gyri; (iii) and emotion processing with the insula. Interestingly, increased activations in the cingulate gyri and putamen, highlighted their potential key role in the emotion-action binding, due to their involvement in emotion processing, motor actions, and memory. The present study confirmed our previous results and point out for the first time the functional brain activity related to the emotion-action association