Early tone categorization in absolute pitch musicians is subserved by the right-sided perisylvian brain

Burkhard, Anja; Elmer, Stefan; Jäncke, Lutz

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-38273-0

Cited by 26 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 85 publications

(145 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In EEG, this interference is reflected by a negative-going deflection around 400 ms after target-onset, which is referred to as the N400 (Kutas and Hillyard 1980;Zhang et al 2010). EEG has an excellent time resolution and has been insightful in capturing the early perceptual and cognitive processes underlying AP (Elmer et al 2013;Rogenmoser et al 2015;Greber et al 2018;Burkhard et al 2019;Leipold, Oderbolz, et al 2019). In the present study, the participants were instructed to judge as quickly and accurately as possible whether pictures (targets) were either pleasant or unpleasant by pressing one of two response buttons.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Auditory aversion in absolute pitch possessors

Rogenmoser

Li²,

Jäncke

et al. 2020

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Absolute pitch (AP) refers to the ability of identifying the pitch of a given tone without reliance on any reference pitch. The downside of possessing AP may be the experience of disturbance when exposed to out-of-tune tones. Here, we investigated this so-far unexplored phenomenon in AP, which we refer to as auditory aversion. Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded in a sample of AP possessors and matched control musicians without AP while letting them perform a task underlying a so-called affective priming paradigm: Participants judged valenced pictures preceded by musical primes as quickly and accurately as possible. The primes were bimodal, presented as tones in combination with visual notations that either matched or mismatched the actually presented tone. Regardless of the prime condition, AP possessors performed more poorly in judging pleasant pictures and their EEG revealed later peaks at around 200 ms (P200) after prime onset. Their performance dropped when responding to pleasant pictures preceded by incongruent primes, especially when mistuned by one semitone.This interference was also reflected in an EEG deflection at around 400 ms (N400) after picture onset, preceding the behavior responses. These findings suggest that AP possessors process mistuned musical stimuli and pleasant pictures as affectively unrelated with each other, supporting an aversion towards out-of-tune tones in AP possessors. The longer prime-related P200 latencies exhibited by AP possessors suggest a delay in integrating musical stimuli, underlying an altered affinity towards pitch-label associations.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Auditory aversion in absolute pitch possessors

Rogenmoser

Li²,

Jäncke

et al. 2020

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Previous neurophysiological studies have repeatedly reported group differences between AP and non-AP musicians during attentive listening without labeling instruction (Zatorre et al, 1998;Ohnishi et al, 2001;Wu et al, 2008;Wengenroth et al, 2014;Burkhard et al, 2019;Leipold et al, 2019a). In the current study, we tested whether these AP-specific alterations in neurophysiological activity modify the need for inhibition.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Suppression of Pitch Labeling: No Evidence for an Impact of Absolute Pitch on Behavioral and Neurophysiological Measures of Cognitive Inhibition in an Auditory Go/Nogo Task

Greber

Jäncke

2020

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Pitch labeling in absolute pitch (AP), the ability to recognize the pitch class of a sound without an external reference, is effortless, fast, and presumably automatic. Previous studies have shown that pitch labeling in AP can interfere with task demands. In the current study, we used a cued auditory Go/Nogo task requiring same/different decisions to investigate both behavioral and electrophysiological correlates of increased inhibitory demands related to automatic pitch labeling. The task comprised two Nogo conditions: a Nogo condition with pitch differences larger than one semitone, and a second Nogo condition with pitch differences of only a quarter semitone. The first Nogo condition tested if auditory-related inhibition processes are generally altered in AP musicians. The second Nogo condition tested the suppressibility of the pitch labeling using a Stroop-like effect: the two tones belonged to the same pitch class but were not identical in terms of tone frequency. If pitch labeling cannot be suppressed, the conflicting information would be expected to increase the inhibitory load in AP musicians. Our data provided no evidence for an increased difficulty to inhibit a prepotent response or to suppress conflicting pitch-labeling information in AP: AP musicians showed similar commission error rates as non-AP musicians in both Nogo conditions. N2d and P3d amplitudes of AP musicians were also comparable to those of non-AP musicians. The event-related potentials (ERPs) were, however, modulated by the Nogo condition, probably indicating an effect of stimulus similarity. It is possible that, depending on the context, pitch labeling in AP musicians is not entirely automatic and can be suppressed.

show abstract

“…In this study, we will focus on the mental strategies adopted by musicians in the process of note pitch recognition. This represents the starting point for our ongoing project, whose aim is to relate these mental elements to the corresponding neural networks activated in the brain that are being currently studied directly from a neural perspective (Brauchli et al, 2019;Burkhard et al, 2019;Leipold et al, 2019;McKetton et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%