Hierarchical syntax models of music predict theta power during music listening

Abstract

Linguistic research showed that the depth of syntactic embedding is reflected in brain theta power. Here, we test whether this also extends to non-linguistic stimuli, specifically music. We used a hierarchical model of musical syntax to continuously quantify two types of expert-annotated harmonic dependencies throughout a piece of Western classical music: prolongation and preparation. Prolongations can roughly be understood as a musical analogue to linguistic coordination between constituents that share the same function (e.g., 'pizza' and 'pasta' in 'I ate pizza and pasta'). Preparation refers to the dependency between two harmonies whereby the first implies a resolution towards the second (e.g., dominant towards tonic; similar to how the adjective implies the presence of a noun in 'I like spicy...'). Source reconstructed MEG data of sixty-eight participants listening to the musical piece was then analysed. We used Bayesian Mixed Effects models to predict theta envelope in the brain, using the number of open prolongation and preparation dependencies as predictors whilst controlling for audio envelope. We observed that prolongation and preparation both carry independent and distinguishable predictive value for theta band fluctuation in key linguistic areas such as the Angular, Supramarginal, Superior Temporal and Heschl's Gyri, or their right-lateralised homologues, with preparation showing additional predictive value for areas associated with the reward system and prediction. Musical expertise further mediated these effects in language-related brain areas. Results show that predictions of precisely formalised music-theoretical models are reflected in the brain activity of listeners.

Interpreting Rhythm as Parsing: Syntactic‐Processing Operations Predict the Migration of Visual Flashes as Perceived During Listening to Musical Rhythms

“…Our results support this perspective in the context of musical rhythms, enriching prior evidence that integrated representations of melodic and harmonic structure as a whole are formed during listening Koelsch et al, 2013;Martínez, 2018;Rohrmeier & Widdess, 2017) and that such representations are even revised retrospectively if necessary to ensure global coherence (Cecchetti et al, 2022). The non-local nature of the hypothesized dependencies further supports that such representations can be hierarchical rather than sequential (Rohrmeier & Pearce, 2018), consistently with prior evidence pertaining to pitch and tonal harmony (Dibben, 1994;Herff et al, 2021Herff et al, , 2023Koelsch et al, 2013;Martins, Gingras, Puig-Waldmueller, & Fitch, 2017;Serafine, Glassman, & Overbeeke, 1989). Note that this framework does not require, and the present results do not suggest, that the relationships underlying such representations are explicitly available to conscious awareness.…”

“…The present results contribute to support this analogy at Marr's computational level by providing evidence that a grammar (e.g., Rohrmeier, 2020a), if interpreted as a model of the listeners’ competence for rhythmic structure, carries predictive value toward listeners’ behavioral responses (cf. Herff et al., 2021 for converging evidence in the context of harmony). The present results also provide preliminary empirical grounding to theoretical proposals that the experience of musical structure may be understood as the result of cognitive operations algorithmically analogous to those of a parser as detailed by Jackendoff (1991).…”

“…From this perspective, idiom‐specific music‐theoretical frameworks can be interpreted as explicit hypotheses about the nature of a syntactic competence (Cecchetti, Herff, Finkensiep, & Rohrmeier, 2020), which both expert and untrained listeners may acquire through implicit learning (Rohrmeier, 2010; Tillmann, 2005) and grammar induction from the exposure to repertoires (Harasim, 2020; Rohrmeier & Cross, 2009, 2013). Research on this topic has predominantly focused on the domain of harmony, showing that listeners are sensitive to hierarchical structures and their complexity (Herff, Harasim, Cecchetti, Finkensiep, & Rohrmeier, 2021; Koelsch, Rohrmeier, Torrecuso, & Jentschke, 2013; Ma, Ding, Tao, & Yang, 2018) and that harmonic syntactic structures are processed during listening resulting in the detection of violations (Maess, Koelsch, Gunter, & Friederici, 2001; Patel, Gibson, Ratner, Besson, & Holcomb, 1998; Slevc, Rosenberg, & Patel, 2009) as well as retrospective revision (Cecchetti, Herff, & Rohrmeier, 2022). At least part of the experience of music may then originate, similarly to language, as the cognitive implementation of an incremental parser (Cecchetti et al., 2022; Jackendoff, 1991).…”

Eye Closure Interacts with Music to Influence Vividness and Content of Directed Imagery

“…Both the prior and standardization are widely used in the auditory as well as music cognition literature (Beveridge, Cano, & Herff, 2021;Cecchetti, Herff, & Rohrmeier, 2022;Herff, Dorsheimer, Dahmen, & Prince, 2022;Herff, Harasim, Cecchetti, Finkensiep, & Rohrmeier, 2021;Herff et al, 2020;MacRitchie, Breaden, Milne, & McIntyre, 2020;Smit, Dobrowohl, Schaal, Milne, & Herff, 2020;Smit, Milne, Sarvasy, & Dean, 2022). Based on the research question at hand, each model then predicted a given dependent variable (vividness, distance, time, or emotional sentiment) whilst accounting for participant and trial effects through random intercepts.…”

Discovering Tonal Profiles with Latent Dirichlet Allocation

“…While chord recognition focuses on local and key finding on global levels, music theory suggests the existence of several intermediate levels that are frequently conceptualized as being hierarchically nested (e.g., Hauptmann, 1853; Schenker, 1935; Salzer, 1952; Lerdahl and Jackendoff, 1983; Lerdahl, 2001; Rohrmeier, 2011, 2020; Rohrmeier and Moss, 2021). A number of psychological studies provide evidence for the perceptual reality of hierarchical organization in music (Krumhansl, 2004; Tillmann and Bigand, 2004; Koelsch et al, 2013; Farbood, 2016; Herff et al, 2021) but the exact relation between theoretically postulated and perceived hierarchies is not yet fully understood.…”