In the first comprehensive study of the relationship between music and language from the standpoint of cognitive neuroscience, Aniruddh D. Patel challenges the widespread belief that music and ...language are processed independently. This volume argues that music and language share deep and critical connections, and that comparative research provides a powerful way to study the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying these uniquely human abilities.
Humans possess an ability to perceive and synchronize movements to the beat in music (‘beat perception and synchronization’), and recent neuroscientific data have offered new insights into this ...beat-finding capacity at multiple neural levels. Here, we review and compare behavioural and neural data on temporal and sequential processing during beat perception and entrainment tasks in macaques (including direct neural recording and local field potential (LFP)) and humans (including fMRI, EEG and MEG). These abilities rest upon a distributed set of circuits that include the motor cortico-basal-ganglia–thalamo-cortical (mCBGT) circuit, where the supplementary motor cortex (SMA) and the putamen are critical cortical and subcortical nodes, respectively. In addition, a cortical loop between motor and auditory areas, connected through delta and beta oscillatory activity, is deeply involved in these behaviours, with motor regions providing the predictive timing needed for the perception of, and entrainment to, musical rhythms. The neural discharge rate and the LFP oscillatory activity in the gamma- and beta-bands in the putamen and SMA of monkeys are tuned to the duration of intervals produced during a beat synchronization–continuation task (SCT). Hence, the tempo during beat synchronization is represented by different interval-tuned cells that are activated depending on the produced interval. In addition, cells in these areas are tuned to the serial-order elements of the SCT. Thus, the underpinnings of beat synchronization are intrinsically linked to the dynamics of cell populations tuned for duration and serial order throughout the mCBGT. We suggest that a cross-species comparison of behaviours and the neural circuits supporting them sets the stage for a new generation of neurally grounded computational models for beat perception and synchronization.
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The March issue contains a laboratory study of auditory perception, which is an unusual topic for this journal. A perspective is provided on how the study relates to recent research on clinical ...auditory alarms and displays. Techniques used in the study are explored and explained, such as enrolment of non-clinician volunteer participants, use of coordinate response measure phrase stimuli, presentation of sound loudness levels using the decibel scale, and analysis using signal detection theory. Such efforts to improve the safety, efficacy, and tolerability of modern medical device alarms are critical for improved patient safety.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
The meanings and causes of hearing voices that others cannot hear (auditory verbal hallucinations, in psychiatric parlance) have been debated for thousands of years. Voice-hearing has been both ...revered and condemned, understood as a symptom of disease as well as a source of otherworldly communication. Those hearing voices have been viewed as mystics, potential psychiatric patients or simply just people with unusual experiences, and have been beatified, esteemed or accepted, as well as drugged, burnt or gassed. This book travels from voice-hearing in the ancient world through to contemporary experience, examining how power, politics, gender, medicine and religion have shaped the meaning of hearing voices. Who hears voices today, what these voices are like and their potential impact are comprehensively examined. Cutting edge neuroscience is integrated with current psychological theories to consider what may cause voices and the future of research in voice-hearing is explored.
The ability to predict when something will happen facilitates sensory processing and the ensuing computations. Building on the observation that neural activity entrains to periodic stimulation, ...leading neurophysiological models imply that temporal predictions rely on oscillatory entrainment. Although they provide a sufficient solution to predict periodic regularities, these models are challenged by a series of findings that question their suitability to account for temporal predictions based on aperiodic regularities. Aiming for a more comprehensive model of how the brain anticipates 'when' in auditory contexts, we emphasize the capacity of motor and higher-order top-down systems to prepare sensory processing in a proactive and temporally flexible manner. Focusing on speech processing, we illustrate how this framework leads to new hypotheses.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
The fundamental perceptual unit in hearing is the 'auditory object'. Similar to visual objects, auditory objects are the computational result of the auditory system's capacity to detect, extract, ...segregate and group spectrotemporal regularities in the acoustic environment; the multitude of acoustic stimuli around us together form the auditory scene. However, unlike the visual scene, resolving the component objects within the auditory scene crucially depends on their temporal structure. Neural correlates of auditory objects are found throughout the auditory system. However, neural responses do not become correlated with a listener's perceptual reports until the level of the cortex. The roles of different neural structures and the contribution of different cognitive states to the perception of auditory objects are not yet fully understood.
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DOBA, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Abstract
That trauma can play a significant role in the onset and maintenance of voice-hearing is one of the most striking and important developments in the recent study of psychosis. Yet the finding ...that trauma increases the risk for hallucination and for psychosis is quite different from the claim that trauma is necessary for either to occur. Trauma is often but not always associated with voice-hearing in populations with psychosis; voice-hearing is sometimes associated with willful training and cultivation in nonclinical populations. This article uses ethnographic data among other data to explore the possibility of multiple pathways to voice-hearing for clinical and nonclinical individuals whose voices are not due to known etiological factors such as drugs, sensory deprivation, epilepsy, and so forth. We suggest that trauma sometimes plays a major role in hallucinations, sometimes a minor role, and sometimes no role at all. Our work also finds seemingly distinct phenomenological patterns for voice-hearing, which may reflect the different salience of trauma for those who hear voices.
Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) modulates endogenous neural oscillations in healthy human participants by the application of a low-amplitude electrical current with a periodic ...stimulation waveform. Yet, it is unclear if tACS can modulate and restore neural oscillations that are reduced in patients with psychiatric illnesses such as schizophrenia. Here, we asked if tACS modulates network oscillations in schizophrenia. We performed a randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled clinical trial to contrast tACS with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and sham stimulation in 22 schizophrenia patients with auditory hallucinations. We used high-density electroencephalography to investigate if a five-day, twice-daily 10Hz-tACS protocol enhances alpha oscillations and modulates network dynamics that are reduced in schizophrenia. We found that 10Hz-tACS enhanced alpha oscillations and modulated functional connectivity in the alpha frequency band. In addition, 10Hz-tACS enhanced the 40Hz auditory steady-state response (ASSR), which is reduced in patients with schizophrenia. Importantly, clinical improvement of auditory hallucinations correlated with enhancement of alpha oscillations and the 40Hz-ASSR. Together, our findings suggest that tACS has potential as a network-level approach to modulate reduced neural oscillations related to clinical symptoms in patients with schizophrenia.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
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