Neuronal Correlates of Perception, Imagery, and Memory for Familiar Tunes

Abstract

We used fMRI to investigate the neuronal correlates of encoding and recognizing heard and imagined melodies. Ten participants were shown lyrics of familiar verbal tunes; they either heard the tune along with the lyrics, or they had to imagine it. In a subsequent surprise recognition test, they had to identify the titles of tunes that they had heard or imagined earlier. The functional data showed substantial overlap during melody perception and imagery, including secondary auditory areas. During imagery compared with perception, an extended network including pFC, SMA, intraparietal sulcus, and cerebellum showed increased activity, in line with the increased processing demands of imagery. Functional connectivity of anterior right temporal cortex with frontal areas was increased during imagery compared with perception, indicating that these areas form an imagery-related network. Activity in right superior temporal gyrus and pFC was correlated with the subjective rating of imagery vividness. Similar to the encoding phase, the recognition task recruited overlapping areas, including inferior frontal cortex associated with memory retrieval, as well as left middle temporal gyrus. The results present new evidence for the cortical network underlying goal-directed auditory imagery, with a prominent role of the right pFC both for the subjective impression of imagery vividness and for on-line mental monitoring of imagery-related activity in auditory areas.

Auditory imagery and the poor-pitch singer

“…Combined with the prior evidence that this scale predicts neural activity on a voxel-byvoxel basis (Herholz et al, 2012;Zatorre et al, 2010), we suggest that participants can make self-judgments of the internal trait of imagery activity in a way wholly adequate for systematic investigation.…”

“…As was described earlier, neuroimaging evidence suggests that auditory images prime motor planning areas and, thus, provide a mechanism for the inverse modeling of perception and action relationships that may be used in contexts like vocal imitation. Our data suggest that poor-pitch singers may fail to generate the kind of (vivid) auditory images that can be used to guide motor planning (Herholz et al, 2012;Zatorre et al, 2010). Identifying this construct as mediating the perception-action link both supports and extends the inverse modeling approach to sensorimotor behavior.…”

“…Thus, auditory imagery may allow one to carry out the kind of sensorimotor transformations that allow inverse modeling of perception and action (cf. Herholz, Halpern, & Zatorre, 2012;Zatorre, Halpern, & Bouffard, 2010). Behaviorally, past research has shown that better auditory imagery ability facilitates consistency of expressive timing in performance (Clark & Williamon, 2011) and more effective practice (Brown & Palmer, 2012;Highben & Palmer, 2004).…”

Neural correlates of specific musical anhedonia

“…Interestingly, no significant differences were found between the left STG and other brain areas, supporting the notion of an asymmetry favoring the right auditory cortex in music processing. Indeed, the right auditory cortex and related networks have been consistently implicated in various processes relevant for music perception, including pitch representation (29)(30)(31), tonal pattern processing (32,33), tonal working memory (34,35), tonal learning (36,37), and musical imagery (38). These cognitive processes would be important not just in decoding musical patterns but also in generating the expectancies that we believe are critical to generating musical pleasure (39).…”

Dynamic Assessment: Mechanisms Underlying Cognitive Modifiability

“…Brain's systems and cellular structures are certainly material, but this does not rule out the possibility that complex activation and interaction patterns at cellular and systems levels of the brain could lead to the formation of an apparently immaterial mind through increasing sophistication and layered abstraction [17]. Neuroscientific evidence has reported many neurological correlates for various mental functions and abilities [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26].…”