Neural and Behavioral Evidence for Frequency-Selective Context Effects in Rhythm Processing in Humans

Abstract

When listening to music, people often perceive and move along with a periodic meter. However, the dynamics of mapping between meter perception and the acoustic cues to meter periodicities in the sensory input remain largely unknown. To capture these dynamics, we recorded the EEG while non-musician and musician participants listened to nonrepeating rhythmic sequences where acoustic cues to meter frequencies either gradually decreased (from regular to degraded) or increased (from degraded to regular). The results revealed greater neural activity selectively elicited at meter frequencies when the sequence gradually changed from regular to degraded compared to the opposite. Importantly, this effect was unlikely to arise from overall gain, or low-level auditory processing, as revealed by physiological modeling. Moreover, the context effect was more pronounced in non-musicians, who also demonstrated facilitated sensory-motor synchronization with the meter for sequences that started as regular. In contrast, musicians showed weaker effects of recent context in their neural responses and robust ability to move along with the meter irrespective of stimulus degradation. Together, our results demonstrate that brain activity elicited by rhythm does not only reflect passive tracking of stimulus features, but represents continuous integration of sensory input with recent context.

Mapping between sound, brain and behaviour: four-level framework for understanding rhythm processing in humans and non-human primates

“…However, this mapping might be less spontaneous than mapping meter onto strongly periodic inputs (level 2), thus indicating possible engagement of different processes. This hypothesis is corroborated by tapping studies suggesting that long-term musical training may significantly improve the ability to map meter onto weakly periodic inputs [ 45 , 82 ]. These results suggest that differentiating strongly and weakly periodic inputs might significantly improve batteries aimed to test individual differences in meter processing [ 164 – 167 ].…”

“…In many cases, the different measures might be used in a complementary way to provide better insight into pulse representation within a signal (e.g. [ 82 , 83 ]).…”

“…In order to investigate the nature of the mapping between the sensory input and internal metric pulses, the physical properties of the sensory input itself must be taken into account. How prominent a pulse is within the physical input has been estimated, for example, using methods based on contrast [ 4 , 79 , 82 , 84 ], frequency-tagging [ 77 , 81 , 83 , 85 , 86 ] or autocorrelation [ 72 , 87 ]. Investigating the sensitivity of the perceptual system to the periodicity of various input features has contributed to understanding the mapping from rhythmic input to internal meter [ 4 , 74 , 88 , 89 ], and has led to the development of extensive models of pulse and meter perception [ 46 , 88 , 90 , 91 ].…”

Neural entrainment facilitates duplets: Frequency-tagging differentiates musicians and non-musicians when they tap to the beat

“…This may reflect the effect of years of extensive musical practice involving rhythmic synchronization. It seems that differences in the neural entrainment between musicians and non-musicians during listening may only occur when top-down perceptual tasks are required, such as keeping a mental pulse (Stupacher, Wood and Witte, 2017), building a metrical structure (Celma-Miralles and Toro, 2019) or performing SMS tasks (Lenc, Keller, Varlet and Nozaradan, 2020). Furthermore, the neural entrainment to the beat of duplets and quintuplets was not different between the two groups.…”

Tapping Force Encodes Metrical Aspects of Rhythm

“…When listening to music, people often perceive a certain regularity in the auditory temporal pattern, emerging from the presence of perceptual accents at specific intervals known as "beats." Our ability to extract rhythmic patterns from temporal events crucially depends on several factors, including the temporal context (Lenc et al, 2020) and cultural environment (Jacoby and McDermott, 2017;London et al, 2017;van der Weij et al, 2017), and this has been widely explored over the years (Grondin, 2010;McAuley, 2010). One of the most influential ideas in time perception research is that humans possess an internal clock mechanism by which we measure and represent time (Treisman, 1963;Treisman et al, 1990).…”