The importance of the fibre tracts connecting the planum temporale in absolute pitch possessors

2020

Preprint

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Professional musicians are a popular model for investigating experience-dependent plasticity in human large-scale brain networks. A minority of musicians possess absolute pitch, the ability to name a tone without reference. The study of absolute pitch musicians provides insights into how a very specific talent is reflected in brain networks.Previous studies of the effects of musicianship and absolute pitch on large-scale brain networks have yielded highly heterogeneous findings regarding the localization and direction of the effects. This heterogeneity was likely influenced by small samples and vastly different methodological approaches.Here, we conducted a comprehensive multimodal assessment of effects of musicianship and absolute pitch on intrinsic functional and structural connectivity using a variety of commonly employed and state-of-the-art multivariate methods in the largest sample to date (n = 153; 52 absolute pitch musicians, 51 relative pitch musicians, and 50 non-musicians).Our results show robust effects of musicianship in inter- and intrahemispheric connectivity in both structural and functional networks. Crucially, most of the effects were replicable in both musicians with and without absolute pitch when compared to non-musicians. However, we did not find evidence for an effect of absolute pitch on intrinsic functional or structural connectivity in our data: The two musician groups showed strikingly similar networks across all analyses.Our results suggest that long-term musical training is associated with robust changes in large-scale brain networks. The effects of absolute pitch on neural networks might be extremely subtle, requiring very large samples or task-based experiments to be detected.

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Musical expertise shapes functional and structural brain networks independent of absolute pitch ability

Leipold

Klein

2020

Preprint

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“…All 105 participants were recruited within a larger research project investigating the neural correlates of AP (Greber et al, 2018(Greber et al, , 2020Brauchli et al, 2019Brauchli et al, , 2020Burkhard et al, 2019Burkhard et al, , 2020Leipold et al, 2019a,b,c) and were professional musicians, music students, or highly-trained amateur musicians. In total, 54 musicians with AP and 51 musicians without AP participated in this study.…”

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Participants responded by selecting a label from a list of all possible labels (C3 to B5) within a maximal trial duration of 15,000 ms. Following the same scoring procedure as the other studies within the AP project (Greber et al, 2018(Greber et al, , 2020Brauchli et al, 2019Brauchli et al, , 2020Burkhard et al, 2019Burkhard et al, , 2020Leipold et al, 2019a,b,c), we quantified pitch-labeling ability as the percentage of correctly identified pitch classes without considering octave errors (Deutsch, 2013). We did not assign full or partial points to semitone errors.…”

Section: Pitch-labeling Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Suppression of Pitch Labeling: No Evidence for an Impact of Absolute Pitch on Behavioral and Neurophysiological Measures of Cognitive Inhibition in an Auditory Go/Nogo Task

Greber

2020

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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Pitch labeling in absolute pitch (AP), the ability to recognize the pitch class of a sound without an external reference, is effortless, fast, and presumably automatic. Previous studies have shown that pitch labeling in AP can interfere with task demands. In the current study, we used a cued auditory Go/Nogo task requiring same/different decisions to investigate both behavioral and electrophysiological correlates of increased inhibitory demands related to automatic pitch labeling. The task comprised two Nogo conditions: a Nogo condition with pitch differences larger than one semitone, and a second Nogo condition with pitch differences of only a quarter semitone. The first Nogo condition tested if auditory-related inhibition processes are generally altered in AP musicians. The second Nogo condition tested the suppressibility of the pitch labeling using a Stroop-like effect: the two tones belonged to the same pitch class but were not identical in terms of tone frequency. If pitch labeling cannot be suppressed, the conflicting information would be expected to increase the inhibitory load in AP musicians. Our data provided no evidence for an increased difficulty to inhibit a prepotent response or to suppress conflicting pitch-labeling information in AP: AP musicians showed similar commission error rates as non-AP musicians in both Nogo conditions. N2d and P3d amplitudes of AP musicians were also comparable to those of non-AP musicians. The event-related potentials (ERPs) were, however, modulated by the Nogo condition, probably indicating an effect of stimulus similarity. It is possible that, depending on the context, pitch labeling in AP musicians is not entirely automatic and can be suppressed.

“…In contrast, lesser consensus exists on the exact mechanisms and involved brain structures driving AP. One brain structure frequently reported to contribute to AP is the planum temporale (PT) [13][14][15][16][17][18][19], a region that covers the superior temporal plane posterior to the Heschl's gyrus and is involved in language and higher auditory functions [20]. In AP possessors, the PT is likely responsible for a higher resolution in the pitch perception of categories; in other words, the encoding of tones within narrower long-term stored categories [11,19,21,22].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The left dorsal stream causally mediates the tone labeling in absolute pitch

Rogenmoser

Arnicane

et al. 2020

Preprint

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BackgroundAbsolute pitch (AP) refers to the ability of effortlessly identifying given pitches without the reliance on any reference pitch. Correlative evidence suggests that the left posterior dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is responsible for the process underlying pitch labeling in AP.ObjectiveHere, we aimed at investigating the causal relationship between the DLPFC and the pitch-labeling process underlying AP.MethodsTo address this, we measured sight-reading performance of right-handed AP possessors and matched control musicians (N =18 per sample) under cathodal and sham transcranial direct current stimulation of the left DLPFC. The participants were instructed to report visually presenting notations as accurately and fast as possible by playing with their right hand on a piano. The notations were simultaneously presented with distracting auditory stimuli that either matched or mismatched them in different semitone degrees.ResultsUnlike the control participants, the AP possessors revealed an interference effect in that they responded slower in mismatching conditions than in the matching one. Under cathodal stimulation, half of the time discrepancies between matching and mismatching conditions vanished; specifically, the ones with small up to moderate deviations.ConclusionsThese findings confirm that the pitch-labeling process underlying AP occurs automatically and is largely non-suppressible when triggered by tone exposure. The improvement of the AP possessors’ sight-reading performance in response to the suppression of the left DLPFC using cathodal stimulation confirms a causal relationship between this brain structure and pitch labeling.