The Musical Structure of Time in the Brain: Repetition, Rhythm, and Harmony in fMRI During Rest and Passive Movie Viewing

Abstract

Space generally overshadows time in the construction of theories in cognitive neuroscience. In this paper, we pivot from the spatial axes to the temporal, analyzing fMRI image series to reveal structures in time rather than space. To determine affinities among global brain patterns at different times, core concepts in network analysis (derived from graph theory) were applied temporally, as relations among brain images at every time point during an fMRI scanning epoch. To explore the temporal structures observed through this adaptation of network analysis, data from 180 subjects in the Human Connectome Project were examined, during two experimental conditions: passive movie viewing and rest. The temporal brain, like the spatial brain, exhibits a modular structure, where "modules" are intermittent (distributed in time). These temporal entities are here referred to as themes. Short sequences of themes -motifs -were studied in sequences from 4 to 11 s in length. Many motifs repeated at constant intervals, and are therefore rhythmic; rhythms, converted to frequencies, were often harmonic. We speculate that the structure and interaction of these global oscillations underwrites the capacity to experience and navigate a world which is both recognizably stable and noticeably changing at every moment -a temporal world. In its temporal structure, this brain-constituted world resembles music.

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“…The shift from spatiality to temporality proposed by Sentiomics is in agreement with the hypothesis of the "music of thought" proposed by Lloyd [14,15] as a counterpoint to the famous hypothesis of the "language of thought" [16]. According to Lloyd, instead of simple frequencies, could modulate that experience by modulating the brain waves.…”

“…One can approach them, for instance, as rhythms, motifs, themes, harmonies, and modulations. While [15] has based his initial and promising analyses on fMRI data, we believe that high temporal resolution data would make the link between brain activity and music-like structure even more evident.…”

“…About the use of musicology as a toolkit to analyze measurements of brain activity and the hypothesis of the "music of thought", see[14,15].…”

Involuntary, Limited, and Contiguously Repeating Musical Imagery (InLaCReMI): Reconciling Theory and Data on the Musical Material Acquired by Earworms

“…An option that avoids self-report altogether is brain imaging. While brain imaging studies of (voluntary) musical imagery are available (Halpern, 2001;Regev et al, 2021;Zatorre, 1999;Zatorre & Halpern, 2005;Zatorre et al, 1996), no studies have been cited reporting brain imaging during INMI episodes, and there is little known about what trackable, time-based brain activity corresponds to imagined musical structures, but there are some promising developments (Lloyd, 2020).…”

“…SAMs have been used to provide mechanistic explanations of the cognitive processing of music, such as the organization of chord progressions (Bharucha & Stoeckig, 1987), links from pieces of music being brought to mind as a result of hearing another (Faubion-Trejo & Mantell, 2022, p. 305), affective responses to music (Schubert et al, 2014; Völker, 2022), and the creative process (Duch, 2007; Gabora & Ranjan, 2013; Schubert, 2012, 2021). Mace's research on involuntary memories has been influential, particularly through his application of spreading activation models of cognition (Mace, 2005a, 2005b; Mace et al, 2018, 2020), but has yet to be developed into a fully fledged theory to explain INMI in general and InLaCReMI specifically.…”