Shared neural resources of rhythm and syntax: An ALE Meta-Analysis

Abstract

A growing body of evidence has highlighted behavioral connections between musical rhythm and linguistic syntax, suggesting that these may be mediated by common neural resources. Here, we performed a quantitative meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies using activation likelihood estimate (ALE) to localize the shared neural structures engaged in a representative set of musical rhythm (rhythm, beat, and meter) and linguistic syntax (merge movement, and reanalysis). Rhythm engaged a bilateral sensorimotor network throughout the brain consisting of the inferior frontal gyri, supplementary motor area, superior temporal gyri/temporoparietal junction, insula, the intraparietal lobule, and putamen. By contrast, syntax mostly recruited the left sensorimotor network including the inferior frontal gyrus, posterior superior temporal gyrus, premotor cortex, and supplementary motor area. Intersections between rhythm and syntax maps yielded overlapping regions in the left inferior frontal gyrus, left supplementary motor area, and bilateral insula-neural substrates involved in temporal hierarchy processing and predictive coding. Together, this is the first neuroimaging meta-analysis providing detailed anatomical overlap of sensorimotor regions recruited for musical rhythm and linguistic syntax. Figure 1: Schematics of rhythm and syntax. (A) An example music sequence consisting of quarter and eighth notes. Rhythms (in red) are the pattern of onsets perceived by the listener. Beat and meter (in green and blue) are extracted from the rhythms by the listener. (B) Three representative examples of syntax explored in the present meta-analysis. Merge brings together words or smaller phrases into larger phrases. Movement processes dependent nodes that are often found in whquestions. Reanalysis occurs when extracting complicated grammatical roles resolving ambiguous word orders, such as in the garden path sentence exhibited here. NP: noun phrase; Sent: sentence; Det: determinant; N: noun; Adj: adjective; Wh: question word; VP: verb phrase; Pa: participle.

Rhythmic priming of syntactic processing in Jabberwocky: a short-lived effect

“…The present study explored the hypothesis that there is a cognitive system responsible for coding abstract hierarchical structure, which is recruited by both language and musical rhythm processing (Asano et al, 2021;Fitch & Martins, 2014;Heard & Lee, 2019;Martins et al, 2017).…”

“…It has recently been suggested that there are several brain networks and neural mechanisms common to musical rhythm and speech and language processing. Some of these overlapping brain regions include networks of cortical regions such as the left inferior frontal gyrus, the left supplementary motor area, the bilateral insula and subcortical brain regions such as the basal ganglia and the cerebellum (Fujii & Wan, 2014;Heard & Lee, 2019;Kotz et al, 2014;Kotz & Schwartze, 2010;Patel & Iversen, 2014;Schwartze & Kotz, 2016;.…”

“…The authors proposed that rhythmic patterns may not only help identify word boundaries, but also provide cues implying certain grammatical structures (Slater & Kraus, 2016;Yates et al, 2019). At the brain level, a recent activation likelihood estimate (ALE) meta-analysis has reported several overlapping brain regions involved in rhythm and syntax processing, including the left inferior frontal gyrus (pars opercularis), the left supplementary motor area, as well as the bilateral insula (Heard & Lee, 2019). Furthermore, patients with lesions or neurodegenerative diseases to the basal ganglia show impaired speech rhythm production, musical rhythm discrimination and a missing P600, an ERP-response traditionally associated with syntactic integration (Grahn & Brett, 2009;Osterhout & Holcomb, 1993).…”