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Converging research efforts have proposed that musical sounds become rewarding through predictive... more Converging research efforts have proposed that musical sounds become rewarding through predictive processes in the brain's pleasure networks, including dopamine release in the midbrain (Blood and Zatorre, 2001; Gebauer et al., 2012). In this commentary we address the subtle, yet important distinction between two types of “prediction error” that are sometimes conflated in the music neuroscience literature: (i) reward prediction error (RPE) pertaining to (psychological) expectations of how emotionally rewarding a piece of music will be and (ii) prediction error (PE) pertaining to neuronal computation of sensory input relating to the brain's predictions about music itself. Ultimately, “What is the next chord?” (PE) and “How much will I like the next chord?” (RPE) are distinct—potentially orthogonal—questions. While many sources of fundamental pleasure like food, sex, and drugs are readily quantifiable and show a largely monotonic relationship between stimulus amount and pleasure magnitude (until a given saturation point), sources of higher-order pleasures like music cannot be unambiguously quantified (Berridge and Kringelbach, 2008). More music does not in itself imply greater pleasure. Rather, the pleasure potential of music relies on the interplay of prior learning and dynamic changes in stimulus structure over time (Huron, 2006). We propose that predictive coding under the free-energy principle (Friston, 2009)—under which the brain continuously minimizes PE in the interaction with its environment—has the potential to bridge PE and RPE, thus elucidating domain-specific aspects of musical appreciation.
This paper reports results from three experiments using the Musical Ear Test (MET), a new test de... more This paper reports results from three experiments using the Musical Ear Test (MET), a new test designed for measuring musical abilities in both musicians and non-musicians in an objective way with a relatively short duration (< 20 min.). In the first experiment we show how the MET is capable of clearly distinguishing between a group of professional musicians and a group of non-musicians. In the second experiment we demonstrate that results from the MET are strongly correlated with measures of musical expertise obtained using an imitation test. In the third experiment we show that the MET also clearly distinguishes groups of non-musicians, amateurs and professional musicians. The test is found to have a large internal consistency (Cronbach alpha: 0.87). We further show a correlation with amount of practice within the group of professionals as well as a correlation with a forward digit span test.
Background: Synchronization in music has been a popular experimental basis for studying social in... more Background: Synchronization in music has been a popular experimental basis for studying social interactions, as musicians are required to synchronize to each other's beats and integrate abstract social information in order to coordinate their actions as part of a non-verbal communication process. A finger-tapping paradigm has been used in studies of sensorimotor synchronization as well as coordination dynamics within and between people (Repp 2005). Recent models of tapping dynamics have included two error-correction mechanisms: phase and period correction (Repp & Keller). They have generally been linear models, which are oversimplifications of these dynamics.
Background: Synchronization in music has been a popular experimental basis for studying social in... more Background: Synchronization in music has been a popular experimental basis for studying social interactions, as musicians are required to synchronize to each other's beats and integrate abstract social information in order to coordinate their actions as part of a non-verbal communication process. A finger-tapping paradigm has been used in studies of sensorimotor synchronization as well as coordination dynamics within and between people (Repp 2005). Recent models of tapping dynamics have included two error-correction ...
Musicians exchange non-verbal cues as messages when they play together. This is particularly true... more Musicians exchange non-verbal cues as messages when they play together. This is particularly true in music with a sketchy outline. Jazz musicians receive and interpret the cues when performance parts from a regular pattern of rhythm, suggesting that they enjoy a highly developed sensitivity to subtle deviations of rhythm. We demonstrate that pre-attentive brain responses recorded with magnetoencephalography to rhythmic incongruence are left-lateralized in expert jazz musicians and right-lateralized in musically inept non-musicians. ...
ICMPC9—International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, ESCOM, Bologna, 2006
The relationship between music and language has been one of the most fiercely debated subjects in... more The relationship between music and language has been one of the most fiercely debated subjects in the modern literature of neuroscience and music. In this paper we argue that a musicological study of the online communication between jazz musicians in combination with brain imaging studies offers a unique setting to evaluate communicational aspects of music practices that rarely enters the present discourse on the subject. We employ Miles Davis' quintet of the 1960es and its use of polyrhythmic structures as a ...
Despite the obvious importance of deciding which career to pursue, little is known about the infl... more Despite the obvious importance of deciding which career to pursue, little is known about the influence of personality on career choice. Here we investigated the relation between sensation seeking, a supposedly innate personality trait, and career choice in classical and ...
Music reduces pain in fibromyalgia (FM), a chronic pain disease, but the functional neural correl... more Music reduces pain in fibromyalgia (FM), a chronic pain disease, but the functional neural correlates of music-induced analgesia (MIA) are still largely unknown. We recruited FM patients (n = 22) who listened to their preferred relaxing music and an auditory control (pink noise) for 5 min without external noise from fMRI image acquisition. Resting state fMRI was then acquired before and after the music and control conditions. A significant increase in the amplitude of low frequency fluctuations of the BOLD signal was evident in the left angular gyrus (lAnG) after listening to music, which in turn, correlated to the analgesia reports. The post-hoc seed-based functional connectivity analysis of the lAnG showed found higher connectivity after listening to music with right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rdlPFC), the left caudate (lCau), and decreased connectivity with right anterior cingulate cortex (rACC), right supplementary motor area (rSMA), precuneus and right precentral gyrus (rPreG). Pain intensity (PI) analgesia was correlated (r = 0.61) to the connectivity of the lAnG with the rPreG. Our results show that MIA in FM is related to top-down regulation of the pain modulatory network by the default mode network (DMN).
Perfect pitch, also known as absolute pitch (AP), refers to the rare ability to identify or produ... more Perfect pitch, also known as absolute pitch (AP), refers to the rare ability to identify or produce a musical tone correctly without the benefit of an external reference. AP is often considered to reflect musical giftedness, but it has also been associated with certain disabilities due to increased prevalence of AP in individuals with sensory and developmental disorders. Here, we determine whether individual autistic traits are present in people with AP. We quantified subclinical levels of autism traits using the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) in three matched groups of subjects: 16 musicians with AP (APs), 18 musicians without AP (non-APs), and 16 non-musicians. In addition, we measured AP ability by a pitch identification test with sine wave tones and piano tones. We found a significantly higher degree of autism traits in APs than in non-APs and non-musicians, and autism scores were significantly correlated with pitch identification scores (r = .46, p = .003). However, our results showed that APs did not differ from non-APs on diagnostically crucial social and communicative domain scores and their total AQ scores were well below clinical thresholds for autism. Group differences emerged on the imagination and attention switching subscales of the AQ. Thus, whilst these findings do link AP with autism, they also show that AP ability is most strongly associated with personality traits that vary widely within the normal population.
"Introduction Linguistic meaning relies to a large extend on the different patterns of conte... more "Introduction Linguistic meaning relies to a large extend on the different patterns of contexts in which words appear (Landauer and Dumais 1997). But the neural processing of such linguistic co-occurrence patterns has not been studied scientifically. Changes in the use of frequent words through a text, must be followed by changes in meaning and thus be salient for a cognitive system involved in comprehension, e.g. if a story that has previously used only past tense verbs and third person narration (“she”) starts using first person (“I”) and present tense verbs, then this signals a change in meaning (e.g. a shift to dialogue). Such changes can be observed as co-occurrence patterns. We have previously shown, within a single subject, that across multiple exposures, such patterns evoke hemodynamic responses in a distinct left-lateralized inferior frontal and middle temporal set of brain regions (Wallentin, et al. 2009). This study presents preliminary results from a group study on the same effects."
Multi-feature MMN paradigm Learning a b s t r a c t Studies have consistently shown that the mism... more Multi-feature MMN paradigm Learning a b s t r a c t Studies have consistently shown that the mismatch negativity (MMN) for different auditory features correlates with musical skills, and that this effect is more pronounced for stimuli integrated in complex musical contexts. Hence, the MMN can potentially be used for determining the development of auditory skills and musical expertise. MMN paradigms, however, are typically very long in duration, and far from sounding musical. Therefore, we developed a novel multi-feature MMN paradigm with 6 different deviant types integrated in a complex musical context of no more than 20 min in duration. We found significant MMNs for all 6 deviant types. Hence, this short objective measure can putatively be used as an index for auditory and musical development. ª a v a i l a b l e a t w w w . s c i e n c e d i r e c t . c o m j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / c o r t e x c o r t e x 4 7 ( 2 0 1 1 ) 1 0 9 1 e1 0 9 8 0010-9452/$ e see front matter ª
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by impairments in language and social-emotional c... more Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by impairments in language and social-emotional cognition. Yet, findings of emotion recognition from affective prosody in individuals with ASD are inconsistent. This study investigated emotion recognition and neural processing of affective prosody in high-functioning adults with ASD relative to neurotypical (NT) adults. Individuals with ASD showed mostly typical brain activation of the fronto-temporal and subcortical brain regions in response to affective prosody. Yet, the ASD group showed a trend towards increased activation of the right caudate during processing of affective prosody and rated the emotional intensity lower than NT individuals. This is likely associated with increased attentional task demands in this group, which might contribute to social-emotional impairments.
Music is a potent source for eliciting emotions, but not everybody experience emotions in the sam... more Music is a potent source for eliciting emotions, but not everybody experience emotions in the same way. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show difficulties with social and emotional cognition. Impairments in emotion recognition are widely studied in ASD, and have been associated with atypical brain activation in response to emotional expressions in faces and speech. Whether these impairments and atypical brain responses generalize to other domains, such as emotional processing of music, is less clear. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated neural correlates of emotion recognition in music in high-functioning adults with ASD and neurotypical adults. Both groups engaged similar neural networks during processing of emotional music, and individuals with ASD rated emotional music comparable to the group of neurotypical individuals. However, in the ASD group, increased activity in response to happy compared to sad music was observed in dorsolateral prefrontal regions and in the rolandic operculum/insula, and we propose that this reflects increased cognitive processing and physiological arousal in response to emotional musical stimuli in this group.
The relationship between music and language is fiercely debated in the modern literature of neuro... more The relationship between music and language is fiercely debated in the modern literature of neuroscience and music. Here, we argue that a musicological study of online communication between jazz musicians in combination with brain imaging studies offers a unique setting for evaluating communicational aspects of music practices that rarely enter the present discourse on the subject. We employ Miles Davis' quintet of the 1960s and its use of polyrhythmic structures as a general example of a jazz group focusing on communication. First, we consider jazz in the light of Roman Jakobson's model of communication in a broad perspective. Next, we analyze polyrhythmic occurrences in Herbie Hancock's solo on the jazz Standard "AU of You" as an example of how this communication develops as a narrarive structuring of tension and relief. We identify two typical types of polyrhythms, metric displacement and regrouping of subdivisions. Finally, we show how these polyrhythmic structures employ brain areas hitherto associated with linguistic semantic processing, and discuss possible implications. ), yet the meaning of music is of a far more abstract natura than speech (Levi-Strauss 1969). Nevertheless, musicians constantly communicate auditorially, when playing together, in order to create their musical artwork. This is indeed true in improvisational styles of music such as jazz, where possible communicational parameters include all layers in the musical structure (e.g. melody, harmony, rhythm, dynamics) (Berliner 1994, Levine 1996, Monson 1997, Sadie 2001). In jazz, as in many other musical styles, rhythm is one of the major trajectories for communication, both as a means of establishing and maintaining contact between musicians, and as a device for creating anticipatory patterns of tension and relief, for example between a soloist
A primary focus within neuroimaging research on language comprehension is on the distribution of ... more A primary focus within neuroimaging research on language comprehension is on the distribution of semantic knowledge in the brain. Studies have shown that the left posterior middle temporal gyrus (LPMT), a region just anterior to area MT/V5, is important for the processing of complex action knowledge. It has also been found that motion verbs cause activation in LPMT. In this experiment we investigated whether this effect could be replicated in a setting resembling real life language comprehension, i.e. without any overt behavioral task during passive listening to a story. During fMRI participants listened to a recording of the story ''The Ugly Duckling''. We incorporated a nuisance elimination regression approach for factoring out known nuisance variables both in terms of physiological noise, sound intensity, linguistic variables and emotional content. Compared to the remaining text, clauses containing motion verbs were accompanied by a robust activation of LPMT with no other significant effects, consistent with the hypothesis that this brain region is important for processing motion knowledge, even during naturalistic language comprehension conditions.
This paper reports results from three experiments using the Musical Ear Test (MET), a new test de... more This paper reports results from three experiments using the Musical Ear Test (MET), a new test designed for measuring musical abilities in both musicians and non-musicians in an objective way with a relatively short duration (b 20 min.). In the first experiment we show how the MET is capable of clearly distinguishing between a group of professional musicians and a group of non-musicians. In the second experiment we demonstrate that results from the MET are strongly correlated with measures of musical expertise obtained using an imitation test. In the third experiment we show that the MET also clearly distinguishes groups of non-musicians, amateurs and professional musicians. The test is found to have a large internal consistency (Cronbach alpha: 0.87). We further show a correlation with amount of practice within the group of professionals as well as a correlation with a forward digit span test.
Converging research efforts have proposed that musical sounds become rewarding through predictive... more Converging research efforts have proposed that musical sounds become rewarding through predictive processes in the brain's pleasure networks, including dopamine release in the midbrain (Blood and Zatorre, 2001; Gebauer et al., 2012). In this commentary we address the subtle, yet important distinction between two types of “prediction error” that are sometimes conflated in the music neuroscience literature: (i) reward prediction error (RPE) pertaining to (psychological) expectations of how emotionally rewarding a piece of music will be and (ii) prediction error (PE) pertaining to neuronal computation of sensory input relating to the brain's predictions about music itself. Ultimately, “What is the next chord?” (PE) and “How much will I like the next chord?” (RPE) are distinct—potentially orthogonal—questions. While many sources of fundamental pleasure like food, sex, and drugs are readily quantifiable and show a largely monotonic relationship between stimulus amount and pleasure magnitude (until a given saturation point), sources of higher-order pleasures like music cannot be unambiguously quantified (Berridge and Kringelbach, 2008). More music does not in itself imply greater pleasure. Rather, the pleasure potential of music relies on the interplay of prior learning and dynamic changes in stimulus structure over time (Huron, 2006). We propose that predictive coding under the free-energy principle (Friston, 2009)—under which the brain continuously minimizes PE in the interaction with its environment—has the potential to bridge PE and RPE, thus elucidating domain-specific aspects of musical appreciation.
This paper reports results from three experiments using the Musical Ear Test (MET), a new test de... more This paper reports results from three experiments using the Musical Ear Test (MET), a new test designed for measuring musical abilities in both musicians and non-musicians in an objective way with a relatively short duration (< 20 min.). In the first experiment we show how the MET is capable of clearly distinguishing between a group of professional musicians and a group of non-musicians. In the second experiment we demonstrate that results from the MET are strongly correlated with measures of musical expertise obtained using an imitation test. In the third experiment we show that the MET also clearly distinguishes groups of non-musicians, amateurs and professional musicians. The test is found to have a large internal consistency (Cronbach alpha: 0.87). We further show a correlation with amount of practice within the group of professionals as well as a correlation with a forward digit span test.
Background: Synchronization in music has been a popular experimental basis for studying social in... more Background: Synchronization in music has been a popular experimental basis for studying social interactions, as musicians are required to synchronize to each other's beats and integrate abstract social information in order to coordinate their actions as part of a non-verbal communication process. A finger-tapping paradigm has been used in studies of sensorimotor synchronization as well as coordination dynamics within and between people (Repp 2005). Recent models of tapping dynamics have included two error-correction mechanisms: phase and period correction (Repp & Keller). They have generally been linear models, which are oversimplifications of these dynamics.
Background: Synchronization in music has been a popular experimental basis for studying social in... more Background: Synchronization in music has been a popular experimental basis for studying social interactions, as musicians are required to synchronize to each other's beats and integrate abstract social information in order to coordinate their actions as part of a non-verbal communication process. A finger-tapping paradigm has been used in studies of sensorimotor synchronization as well as coordination dynamics within and between people (Repp 2005). Recent models of tapping dynamics have included two error-correction ...
Musicians exchange non-verbal cues as messages when they play together. This is particularly true... more Musicians exchange non-verbal cues as messages when they play together. This is particularly true in music with a sketchy outline. Jazz musicians receive and interpret the cues when performance parts from a regular pattern of rhythm, suggesting that they enjoy a highly developed sensitivity to subtle deviations of rhythm. We demonstrate that pre-attentive brain responses recorded with magnetoencephalography to rhythmic incongruence are left-lateralized in expert jazz musicians and right-lateralized in musically inept non-musicians. ...
ICMPC9—International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, ESCOM, Bologna, 2006
The relationship between music and language has been one of the most fiercely debated subjects in... more The relationship between music and language has been one of the most fiercely debated subjects in the modern literature of neuroscience and music. In this paper we argue that a musicological study of the online communication between jazz musicians in combination with brain imaging studies offers a unique setting to evaluate communicational aspects of music practices that rarely enters the present discourse on the subject. We employ Miles Davis' quintet of the 1960es and its use of polyrhythmic structures as a ...
Despite the obvious importance of deciding which career to pursue, little is known about the infl... more Despite the obvious importance of deciding which career to pursue, little is known about the influence of personality on career choice. Here we investigated the relation between sensation seeking, a supposedly innate personality trait, and career choice in classical and ...
Music reduces pain in fibromyalgia (FM), a chronic pain disease, but the functional neural correl... more Music reduces pain in fibromyalgia (FM), a chronic pain disease, but the functional neural correlates of music-induced analgesia (MIA) are still largely unknown. We recruited FM patients (n = 22) who listened to their preferred relaxing music and an auditory control (pink noise) for 5 min without external noise from fMRI image acquisition. Resting state fMRI was then acquired before and after the music and control conditions. A significant increase in the amplitude of low frequency fluctuations of the BOLD signal was evident in the left angular gyrus (lAnG) after listening to music, which in turn, correlated to the analgesia reports. The post-hoc seed-based functional connectivity analysis of the lAnG showed found higher connectivity after listening to music with right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rdlPFC), the left caudate (lCau), and decreased connectivity with right anterior cingulate cortex (rACC), right supplementary motor area (rSMA), precuneus and right precentral gyrus (rPreG). Pain intensity (PI) analgesia was correlated (r = 0.61) to the connectivity of the lAnG with the rPreG. Our results show that MIA in FM is related to top-down regulation of the pain modulatory network by the default mode network (DMN).
Perfect pitch, also known as absolute pitch (AP), refers to the rare ability to identify or produ... more Perfect pitch, also known as absolute pitch (AP), refers to the rare ability to identify or produce a musical tone correctly without the benefit of an external reference. AP is often considered to reflect musical giftedness, but it has also been associated with certain disabilities due to increased prevalence of AP in individuals with sensory and developmental disorders. Here, we determine whether individual autistic traits are present in people with AP. We quantified subclinical levels of autism traits using the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) in three matched groups of subjects: 16 musicians with AP (APs), 18 musicians without AP (non-APs), and 16 non-musicians. In addition, we measured AP ability by a pitch identification test with sine wave tones and piano tones. We found a significantly higher degree of autism traits in APs than in non-APs and non-musicians, and autism scores were significantly correlated with pitch identification scores (r = .46, p = .003). However, our results showed that APs did not differ from non-APs on diagnostically crucial social and communicative domain scores and their total AQ scores were well below clinical thresholds for autism. Group differences emerged on the imagination and attention switching subscales of the AQ. Thus, whilst these findings do link AP with autism, they also show that AP ability is most strongly associated with personality traits that vary widely within the normal population.
"Introduction Linguistic meaning relies to a large extend on the different patterns of conte... more "Introduction Linguistic meaning relies to a large extend on the different patterns of contexts in which words appear (Landauer and Dumais 1997). But the neural processing of such linguistic co-occurrence patterns has not been studied scientifically. Changes in the use of frequent words through a text, must be followed by changes in meaning and thus be salient for a cognitive system involved in comprehension, e.g. if a story that has previously used only past tense verbs and third person narration (“she”) starts using first person (“I”) and present tense verbs, then this signals a change in meaning (e.g. a shift to dialogue). Such changes can be observed as co-occurrence patterns. We have previously shown, within a single subject, that across multiple exposures, such patterns evoke hemodynamic responses in a distinct left-lateralized inferior frontal and middle temporal set of brain regions (Wallentin, et al. 2009). This study presents preliminary results from a group study on the same effects."
Multi-feature MMN paradigm Learning a b s t r a c t Studies have consistently shown that the mism... more Multi-feature MMN paradigm Learning a b s t r a c t Studies have consistently shown that the mismatch negativity (MMN) for different auditory features correlates with musical skills, and that this effect is more pronounced for stimuli integrated in complex musical contexts. Hence, the MMN can potentially be used for determining the development of auditory skills and musical expertise. MMN paradigms, however, are typically very long in duration, and far from sounding musical. Therefore, we developed a novel multi-feature MMN paradigm with 6 different deviant types integrated in a complex musical context of no more than 20 min in duration. We found significant MMNs for all 6 deviant types. Hence, this short objective measure can putatively be used as an index for auditory and musical development. ª a v a i l a b l e a t w w w . s c i e n c e d i r e c t . c o m j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / c o r t e x c o r t e x 4 7 ( 2 0 1 1 ) 1 0 9 1 e1 0 9 8 0010-9452/$ e see front matter ª
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by impairments in language and social-emotional c... more Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by impairments in language and social-emotional cognition. Yet, findings of emotion recognition from affective prosody in individuals with ASD are inconsistent. This study investigated emotion recognition and neural processing of affective prosody in high-functioning adults with ASD relative to neurotypical (NT) adults. Individuals with ASD showed mostly typical brain activation of the fronto-temporal and subcortical brain regions in response to affective prosody. Yet, the ASD group showed a trend towards increased activation of the right caudate during processing of affective prosody and rated the emotional intensity lower than NT individuals. This is likely associated with increased attentional task demands in this group, which might contribute to social-emotional impairments.
Music is a potent source for eliciting emotions, but not everybody experience emotions in the sam... more Music is a potent source for eliciting emotions, but not everybody experience emotions in the same way. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show difficulties with social and emotional cognition. Impairments in emotion recognition are widely studied in ASD, and have been associated with atypical brain activation in response to emotional expressions in faces and speech. Whether these impairments and atypical brain responses generalize to other domains, such as emotional processing of music, is less clear. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated neural correlates of emotion recognition in music in high-functioning adults with ASD and neurotypical adults. Both groups engaged similar neural networks during processing of emotional music, and individuals with ASD rated emotional music comparable to the group of neurotypical individuals. However, in the ASD group, increased activity in response to happy compared to sad music was observed in dorsolateral prefrontal regions and in the rolandic operculum/insula, and we propose that this reflects increased cognitive processing and physiological arousal in response to emotional musical stimuli in this group.
The relationship between music and language is fiercely debated in the modern literature of neuro... more The relationship between music and language is fiercely debated in the modern literature of neuroscience and music. Here, we argue that a musicological study of online communication between jazz musicians in combination with brain imaging studies offers a unique setting for evaluating communicational aspects of music practices that rarely enter the present discourse on the subject. We employ Miles Davis' quintet of the 1960s and its use of polyrhythmic structures as a general example of a jazz group focusing on communication. First, we consider jazz in the light of Roman Jakobson's model of communication in a broad perspective. Next, we analyze polyrhythmic occurrences in Herbie Hancock's solo on the jazz Standard "AU of You" as an example of how this communication develops as a narrarive structuring of tension and relief. We identify two typical types of polyrhythms, metric displacement and regrouping of subdivisions. Finally, we show how these polyrhythmic structures employ brain areas hitherto associated with linguistic semantic processing, and discuss possible implications. ), yet the meaning of music is of a far more abstract natura than speech (Levi-Strauss 1969). Nevertheless, musicians constantly communicate auditorially, when playing together, in order to create their musical artwork. This is indeed true in improvisational styles of music such as jazz, where possible communicational parameters include all layers in the musical structure (e.g. melody, harmony, rhythm, dynamics) (Berliner 1994, Levine 1996, Monson 1997, Sadie 2001). In jazz, as in many other musical styles, rhythm is one of the major trajectories for communication, both as a means of establishing and maintaining contact between musicians, and as a device for creating anticipatory patterns of tension and relief, for example between a soloist
A primary focus within neuroimaging research on language comprehension is on the distribution of ... more A primary focus within neuroimaging research on language comprehension is on the distribution of semantic knowledge in the brain. Studies have shown that the left posterior middle temporal gyrus (LPMT), a region just anterior to area MT/V5, is important for the processing of complex action knowledge. It has also been found that motion verbs cause activation in LPMT. In this experiment we investigated whether this effect could be replicated in a setting resembling real life language comprehension, i.e. without any overt behavioral task during passive listening to a story. During fMRI participants listened to a recording of the story ''The Ugly Duckling''. We incorporated a nuisance elimination regression approach for factoring out known nuisance variables both in terms of physiological noise, sound intensity, linguistic variables and emotional content. Compared to the remaining text, clauses containing motion verbs were accompanied by a robust activation of LPMT with no other significant effects, consistent with the hypothesis that this brain region is important for processing motion knowledge, even during naturalistic language comprehension conditions.
This paper reports results from three experiments using the Musical Ear Test (MET), a new test de... more This paper reports results from three experiments using the Musical Ear Test (MET), a new test designed for measuring musical abilities in both musicians and non-musicians in an objective way with a relatively short duration (b 20 min.). In the first experiment we show how the MET is capable of clearly distinguishing between a group of professional musicians and a group of non-musicians. In the second experiment we demonstrate that results from the MET are strongly correlated with measures of musical expertise obtained using an imitation test. In the third experiment we show that the MET also clearly distinguishes groups of non-musicians, amateurs and professional musicians. The test is found to have a large internal consistency (Cronbach alpha: 0.87). We further show a correlation with amount of practice within the group of professionals as well as a correlation with a forward digit span test.
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