The steady-state response of the cerebral cortex to the beat of music reflects both the comprehension of music and attention

Abstract

The brain’s analyses of speech and music share a range of neural resources and mechanisms. Music displays a temporal structure of complexity similar to that of speech, unfolds over comparable timescales, and elicits cognitive demands in tasks involving comprehension and attention. During speech processing, synchronized neural activity of the cerebral cortex in the delta and theta frequency bands tracks the envelope of a speech signal, and this neural activity is modulated by high-level cortical functions such as speech comprehension and attention. It remains unclear, however, whether the cortex also responds to the natural rhythmic structure of music and how the response, if present, is influenced by higher cognitive processes. Here we employ electroencephalography to show that the cortex responds to the beat of music and that this steady-state response reflects musical comprehension and attention. We show that the cortical response to the beat is weaker when subjects listen to a familiar tune than when they listen to an unfamiliar, non-sensical musical piece. Furthermore, we show that in a task of intermodal attention there is a larger neural response at the beat frequency when subjects attend to a musical stimulus than when they ignore the auditory signal and instead focus on a visual one. Our findings may be applied in clinical assessments of auditory processing and music cognition as well as in the construction of auditory brain-machine interfaces.

Classification of familiarity based on cross-correlation features between EEG and music

“…Kong et al [27] reported that the central area was activated strongly while listening to speech. The above-mentioned result is supportive of the findings of previous studies [12], [27].…”

“…These results suggest that the frontal area is important to classify brain states. Meltzer et al [12] showed that the EEG responses to the beat of the music were larger in the frontal, fronto-parietal, and central areas. Kong et al [27] reported that the central area was activated strongly while listening to speech.…”

“…Another approach is to measure an auditory steady-state response (ASSR), which can be elicited by periodically repeated sounds [10]. Recent studies have demonstrated that the cortical entrainment to periodic tones [11] and rhythms of music [12]. However, these MMN and ASSR approaches are not suitable to continuous stimuli such as natural music.…”

A Novel Approach to Investigate Subcortical and Cortical Sensitivity to Temporal Structure Simultaneously

“…For example, our stimulus protocol could provide the means to investigate the effects of attention on responses throughout the auditory pathway. Investigations of effects of attention on subcortical (Rinne et al, 2008;Forte et al, 2017;Galbraith et al, 1995;Holmes et al, 2018) and cortical responses (Rif et al, 1991;Woldorff, 1993;Meltzer et al, 2015;Saupe et al, 2009;Holmes et al, 2018) have previously been conducted in isolation. This stimulus can also be applied to investigate differences in adaptation and sensitivity to changes temporal structure across groups (older vs younger adults; people with hearing impairment vs people without).…”

When tension is exciting: an EEG exploration of excitement in music

“…Music can produce reliable and powerful emotional responses in listeners, which can increase music engagement (Habibi & Damasio, 2014;Menon & Levitin, 2005;Särkämö & Soto, 2012). While there are numerous studies showing different brain areas associated with passive music apprehension and processing musical features, such as rhythm, pitch, and melodies (Habibi & Damasio, 2014;Särkämö & Soto, 2012;Meltzer et al, 2015;Rolison & Edworthy, 2013) little research has explored the specific effects of highly anticipated but deviant music moments on brain activity and emotions. Different music genres create these deviants in different ways, inducing contrasting levels of tension resulting in different levels of anticipation and associated emotions (Koelsch, 2014).…”