Perceptual biases for rhythm: The Mismatch Negativity latency indexes the privileged status of binary vs non-binary interval ratios (original) (raw)
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Neural representation of a rhythm depends on its interval ratio
The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 1999
Rhythm is determined solely by the relationship between the time intervals of a series of events. Psychological studies have proposed two types of rhythm representation depending on the interval ratio of the rhythm: metrical and nonmetrical representation for rhythms formed with small integer ratios and noninteger ratios, respectively. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to test whether there are two neural representations of rhythm depending on the interval ratio. The subjects performed a short-term memory task for a seven-tone rhythm sequence, which was formed with 1:2:4, 1:2:3, or 1:2.5:3.5 ratios. The brain activities during the memory delay period were measured and compared with those during the retention of a control tone sequence, which had constant intertone intervals. The results showed two patterns of brain activations; the left premotor and parietal areas and right cerebellar anterior lobe were active for 1:2:4 and 1:2:3 rhythms, whereas the right prefrontal, pr...
Temporal and Structural Perception of Rhythmic Irregularities
2018
, 54 pages Time perception studies often seek for a timing mechanism that can explain temporal judgments in a general way. In search of such a model, environmental, contextual and subjective factors affecting temporal judgments should be taken into account as well. The present study provides a critical evolution of existing timing models by comparing the interval processing and production strategies of musicians and non-musicians. The study contains 2 experiments: Experiment 1 is a perceptual comparison task and Experiment 2 is a rhythm reproduction task. The contrasts between the two groups are believed to be captured by participants' initial reactions to rhythmic structures. For that purpose, short scale (4 beat) rhythmic samples are used in the experiments. Standard samples are regular 4 beat rhythms. Test samples include regular and irregular rhythms. The irregular conditions are prepared by changing the temporal position of the second beat of the regular rhythms. Early and late second beats in these irregular samples have the same temporal distance from the expected beat. Hence, the expectancy violation reflects any differences between early and late oddball stimuli. The experimental analyses suggest an asymmetry between early and late oddballs in participants' initial reactions to such expectancy violations, in terms of their perceptual comparison of rhythms, as well as their duration and rhythm (re)production. Moreover, it provides evidence for different memory procedures and encoding strategies used by participant groups in order to cope with rhythmic irregularities.
Perception and Production of Syncopated Rhythms
Music Perception, 2007
The cognitive strategies by which humans process complex, metrically-ambiguous rhythmic patterns remain poorly understood. We investigated listeners' abilities to perceive, process and produce complex, syncopated rhythmic patterns played against a regular sequence of pulses.
Imagined Temporal Groupings Tune Oscillatory Neural Activity for Processing Rhythmic Sounds
Timing & Time Perception, 2015
Temporal patterns within complex sound signals, such as music, are not merely processed after they are heard. We also focus attention to upcoming points in time to aid perception, contingent upon regularities we perceive in the sounds' inherent rhythms. Such organized predictions are endogenously maintained as meter -the patterning of sounds into hierarchical timing levels that manifest as strong and weak events. Models of neural oscillations provide potential means for how meter could arise in the brain, but little evidence of dynamic neural activity has been offered. To this end, we conducted a study instructing participants to imagine two-based or three-based metric patterns over identical, equally-spaced sounds while we recorded the electroencephalogram (EEG). In the three-based metric pattern, multivariate analysis of the EEG showed contrasting patterns of neural oscillations between strong and weak events in the delta (2-4 Hz) and alpha (9-14 Hz), frequency bands, while theta (4-9 Hz) and beta (16-24 Hz) bands contrasted two hierarchically weaker events. In two-based metric patterns, neural activity did not drastically differ between strong and weak events. We suggest the findings reflect patterns of neural activation and suppression responsible for shaping perception through time.
Neural mechanisms of rhythm perception: Current findings and future perspectives
Topics in cognitive science, 2012
Perception of temporal patterns is fundamental to normal hearing, speech, motor control, and music. Certain types of pattern understanding are unique to humans, such as musical rhythm. Although human responses to musical rhythm are universal, there is much we do not understand about how rhythm is processed in the brain. Here, I consider findings from research into basic timing mechanisms and models through to the neuroscience of rhythm and meter. A network of neural areas, including motor regions, is regularly implicated in basic timing as well as processing of musical rhythm. However, fractionating the specific roles of individual areas in this network has remained a challenge. Distinctions in activity patterns appear between ''automatic'' and ''cognitively controlled'' timing processes, but the perception of musical rhythm requires features of both automatic and controlled processes. In addition, many experimental manipulations rely on participants directing their attention toward or away from certain stimulus features, and measuring corresponding differences in neural activity. Many temporal features, however, are implicitly processed whether attended to or not, making it difficult to create controlled baseline conditions for experimental comparisons. The variety of stimuli, paradigms, and definitions can further complicate comparisons across domains or methodologies. Despite these challenges, the high level of interest and multitude of methodological approaches from different cognitive domains (including music, language, and motor learning) have yielded new insights and hold promise for future progress.
Modality differences in short-term memory for rhythms
Memory & Cognition, 2000
The source of the well-established advantage of auditory over visual stimuli in short-term memory has long been controversial. This paper provides new data, following up on the theory of Glenberg and associates. They posited that auditory stimuli have better temporal encoding and that time of occurrence provides a good retrieval cue (Glenberg, Eberhardt, & Belden, 1987; Glenberg & Fernandez, 1988; Glenberg & Swanson, 1986). Therefore, the advantage that auditory material has is really due to superior temporal coding, rather than to a special auditory short-term store. Visual and auditory rhythms provided Glenberg and associates with an attractive set of stimuli to test this theory, inasmuch as they are devoid of linguistic content. Glenberg, Mann, Altman, Forman, and Procise (1989) performed a series of experiments in which the stimuli were created from visual flashes or auditory beeps consisting of patterns of long and short durations. In most of the experiments, subjects had to recall ordinal information from each pattern, by tapping sequences on two keys, one indicating long and the other short. The results showed an advantage for auditory rhythms that was not due merely to stimulus clarity or salience, to the alerting advantage of audition, or to people's greater experience with auditory stimuli. Rather, audition enjoyed an advantage in working memory in all serial positions. In follow-up experiments, Glenberg and Jona (1991) were able to eliminate the auditory advantage by manipulating rhythmic structure. They showed that the auditory advantage occurred only with rhythms in which the components bore a simple, integral relationship with each other (as in musically notated rhythms), but not when the rhythmic structure was complex. In a second experiment, the auditory advantage disappeared when the rhythms were slowed down sufficiently that they no longer cohered as a musical gestalt. Dissenting voices have argued that linguistic and rhythmic modality effects could have different causes. Consistent with this, Crowder and Greene (1987) and Schab and Crowder (1989) performed experiments in order to demonstrate that there really are no temporal differences between the modalities when linguistic materials are employed. More germane to rhythms are the data of Watkins, LeCompte, and Fish (1992), whose experiments showed an auditory temporal advantage only when concurrent silent mouthing of the word blah suppressed subvocal recoding of visual input stimuli and only when the stimuli consisted of the same item repeated. It did not matter whether the material was linguistic or any of a variety of nonlinguistic stimuli. These differences between the rhythmic and linguistic modality effects led Watkins et al. to conclude that the two do not stem from the same cognitive sources, which, in turn, raises questions about the pertinence of Glenberg et al.'s rhythm data as support for a temporal theory of an auditory short-term memory advantage. THE PRESENT EXPERIMENTS In the present research, we used a new experimental paradigm to replicate and further understand the advantage of auditory rhythms over visual ones. Two rhythms
Psychological Research, 2011
Two experiments investigated the effects of interval duration ratio on perception of local timing perturbations, accuracy of rhythm production, and phase correction in musicians listening to or tapping in synchrony with cyclically repeated auditory two-interval rhythms. Ratios ranged from simple (1:2) to complex (7:11, 5:13), and from small (5:13 = 0.38) to large (6:7 = 0.86). Rhythm production and perception exhibited similar ratiodependent biases: rhythms with small ratios were produced with increased ratios, and timing perturbations in these rhythms tended to be harder to detect when they locally increased the ratio than when they reduced it. The opposite held for rhythms with large ratios. This demonstrates a close relation between rhythm perception and production. Unexpectedly, however, the neutral ''attractor'' was not the simplest ratio (1:2 = 0.50) but a complex ratio near 4:7 (= 0.57). Phase correction in response to perturbations was generally rapid and did not show the ratio-dependent biases observed in rhythm perception and production. Thus, phase correction operates efficiently and autonomously even in synchronization with rhythms exhibiting complex interval ratios.
Top-Down Control of Rhythm Perception Modulates Early Auditory Responses
Our perceptions are shaped by both extrinsic stimuli and intrinsic interpretation. The perceptual experience of a simple rhythm, for example, depends upon its metrical interpretation (where one hears the beat). Such interpretation can be altered at will, providing a model to study the interaction of endogenous and exogenous influences in the cognitive organization of perception. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we measured brain responses evoked by a repeating, rhythmically ambiguous phrase (two tones followed by a rest). In separate trials listeners were instructed to impose different metrical organizations on the rhythm by mentally placing the downbeat on either the first or the second tone. Since the stimulus was invariant, differences in brain activity between the two conditions should relate to endogenous metrical interpretation. Metrical interpretation influenced early evoked neural responses to tones, specifically in the upper beta range (20-30 Hz). Beta response was stronger (by 64% on average) when a tone was imagined to be the beat, compared to when it was not. A second experiment established that the beta increase closely resembles that due to physical accents, and thus may represent the genesis of a subjective accent. The results demonstrate endogenous modulation of early auditory responses, and suggest a unique role for the beta band in linking of endogenous and exogenous processing. Given the suggested role of beta in motor processing and long-range intracortical coordination, it is hypothesized that the motor system influences metrical interpretation of sound, even in the absence of overt movement.
Working memory for time intervals in auditory rhythmic sequences
The brain can hold information about multiple objects in working memory. It is not known, however, whether intervals of time can be stored in memory as distinct items. Here, we developed a novel paradigm to examine temporal memory where listeners were required to reproduce the duration of a single probed interval from a sequence of intervals. We demonstrate that memory performance significantly varies as a function of temporal structure (better memory in regular vs. irregular sequences), interval size (better memory for sub- vs. supra-second intervals), and memory load (poor memory for higher load). In contrast memory performance is invariant to attentional cueing. Our data represent the first systematic investigation of temporal memory in sequences that goes beyond previous work based on single intervals. The results support the emerging hypothesis that time intervals are allocated a working memory resource that varies with the amount of other temporal information in a sequence.