Mismatch negativity reflects asymmetric pre-attentive harmonic interval discrimination

Abstract

ObjectiveWestern music is based on intervals; thus, interval discrimination is important for distinguishing the character of melodies or tracking melodies in polyphonic music. In this study the encoding of intervals in simultaneously presented sound is studied.Study designIn an electrophysiological experiment in 15 normal-hearing non-musicians, major thirds or fifths were presented in a controlled oddball paradigm. Harmonic intervals were created by simultaneously presented sinusoidals with randomized root frequency. Mismatch negativity (MMN) responses were measured with an EEG recording. The discrimination index was calculated in a psychoacoustic experiment.ResultsA clear MMN response was found for the major third but not for the fifth. The neural generators were located within the auditory cortices. Psychoacoustically, no evidence was found that the subjects were able to detect the deviants.ConclusionsWe conclude that pre-attentive discrimination of harmonic interval size is, in principle, possible in listeners without musical training although simultaneous presentation makes it harder to distinguish compared to non-overlapping intervals. Furthermore we see a difference in the response to infrequent dissonant stimuli in consonant standard stimuli compared to the opposite, rare consonant stimuli in dissonant standard stimuli.

Aesthetic appreciation of musical intervals enhances behavioural and neurophysiological indexes of attentional engagement and motor inhibition

“…Previous studies demonstrated that ERPs may provide neurophysiological indexes of both attentional engagement/selection 31,32 and motor inhibition 33–35 , thus making EEG a suitable technique to investigate the possible correlates of disinterested aesthetic appreciation. We will present content-free auditory stimuli, consisting in more or less consonant two-note intervals (i.e., two synthetic tones displayed simultaneously), because consonance is known to influence aesthetic appreciation 36 and to modulate cortical responses measured with EEG 37–41 . Even though some studies found peference for mild dissonance over consonance 42 , more consonant musical intervals are normally (especially in non musicians 43 ) more appreciated than dissonant ones 36,44–48 .…”

Mismatch Negativity (MMN): Komponen Event-Related Potentials (ERP) sebagai Penanda Aktivitas Otomatis Otak dalam Mendeteksi Perubahan

“…Musik merupakan salah satu ranah yang banyak diteliti menggunakan MMN khususnya dalam hal menyelidiki pemrosesan kognitif serta pengaruh dari pendidikan musik, misalnya: komparasi pada musisi profesional dengan amatir dan/atau non-musisi (Arndt et al, 2019;Kliuchko et al, 2019;Quiroga-Martinez et al, 2020), deteksi error (melodik dan ritmik) stimulus musik pada musisi terlatih (Lappe et al, 2016), peranan kemampuan kognitif dalam pengaruh pelatihan musik terhadap diskriminasi suara (Putkinen et al, 2019;Saarikivi et al, 2016), diskriminasi interval harmonis pada non-musisi (Wagner et al, 2018). Beberapa penelitian terkait musik fokus pada karakteristik individu, misalnya individu dengan congenital amusia, tuli nada (Mathias et al, 2016;Nan et al, 2016), risiko depresi (Bonetti et al, 2017), absolute pitch (Greber et al, 2018), sensitivitas musisi terhadap fitur spesifik musik yang tampaknya dipengaruhi oleh genre yang dipelajari (Tervaniemi et al, 2016;Vuust et al, 2012).…”

Cents versus scale steps: Can we tell the difference between major and minor thirds?

“…Research shows that the perception of subjective distances between two musical notes is well measured by cents 1 (e.g., Kattner & Ellermeier, 2014; Russo & Thompson, 2005) and that disruptions in patterns of cents are perceived regardless of attention, age, and music training (Chang & Trehub, 1977; Stefanics et al, 2009; Wagner, Rahne, Plontke, & Heidekrüger, 2018). Generally, larger cent values result in the perception of intervals that are farther apart.…”