scholarly journals Revisiting top-down and bottom-up brain processes: a systematic review and ALE meta-analysis of musical studies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Pando-Naude ◽  
Agata Patyczek ◽  
Leonardo Bonetti ◽  
Peter Vuust

AbstractThe most remarkable feature of the human brain is perhaps its ability to constantly integrate information from the environment with internal representations to decide the best action. The integration of top-down and bottom-up processes during complex multi-modal human activities, however, is yet to be understood. Music provides an excellent model for understanding this since music listening leads to the urge to move, and music making entails both playing and listening at the same time (i.e. audio-motor coupling). Here, we conducted activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analyses of 130 neuroimaging studies of music perception, production and imagery, with 2660 foci, 139 experiments, and 2516 participants. We found that music perception relies on auditory cortices, music production involves sensorimotor cortices, and music imagery recruits cingulum. This indicates that the brain requires distinct structures to process information which is made available either by the environment (i.e. bottom-up, music perception) or by internal representations (i.e. top-down, music production and imagery).

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Pando-Naude ◽  
Agata Patyczek ◽  
Leonardo Bonetti ◽  
Peter Vuust

AbstractA remarkable feature of the human brain is its ability to integrate information from the environment with internally generated content. The integration of top-down and bottom-up processes during complex multi-modal human activities, however, is yet to be fully understood. Music provides an excellent model for understanding this since music listening leads to the urge to move, and music making entails both playing and listening at the same time (i.e., audio-motor coupling). Here, we conducted activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analyses of 130 neuroimaging studies of music perception, production and imagery, with 2660 foci, 139 experiments, and 2516 participants. We found that music perception and production rely on auditory cortices and sensorimotor cortices, while music imagery recruits distinct parietal regions. This indicates that the brain requires different structures to process similar information which is made available either by an interaction with the environment (i.e., bottom-up) or by internally generated content (i.e., top-down).


2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 799-819 ◽  
Author(s):  
RAJANI SEBASTIAN ◽  
ANGELA R. LAIRD ◽  
SWATHI KIRAN

ABSTRACTThis study reports an activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis of published functional neuroimaging studies of bilingualism. Four parallel meta-analyses were conducted by taking into account the proficiency of participants reported in the studies. The results of the meta-analyses suggest differences in the probabilities of activation patterns between high proficiency and moderate/low proficiency bilinguals. The Talairach coordinates of activation in first language processing were very similar to that of second language processing in the high proficient bilinguals. However, in the low proficient group, the activation clusters were generally smaller and distributed over wider areas in both the hemispheres than the clusters identified in the ALE maps from the high proficient group. These findings draw attention to the importance of language proficiency in bilingual neural representation.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sotaro Kondoh ◽  
Kazuo Okanoya ◽  
Ryosuke O Tachibana

Meter is one of the core features of music perception. It is the cognitive grouping of regular sound sequences, typically for every 2, 3, or 4 beats. Previous studies have suggested that one can not only passively perceive the meter from acoustic cues such as loudness, pitch, and duration of sound elements, but also actively perceive it by paying attention to isochronous sound events without any acoustic cues. Studying the interaction of top-down and bottom-up processing in meter perception leads to understanding the cognitive system’s ability to perceive the entire structure of music. The present study aimed to demonstrate that meter perception requires the top-down process (which maintains and switches attention between cues) as well as the bottom-up process for discriminating acoustic cues. We created a “biphasic” sound stimulus, which consists of successive tone sequences designed to provide cues for both the triple and quadruple meters in different sound attributes, frequency, and duration, and measured how participants perceived meters from the stimulus in a five-point scale (ranged from “strongly triple” to “strongly quadruple”). Participants were asked to focus on differences in frequency and duration. We found that well-trained participants perceived different meters by switching their attention to specific cues, while untrained participants did not. This result provides evidence for the idea that meter perception involves the interaction between top-down and bottom-up processes, which training can facilitate.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (8) ◽  
pp. e0256712
Author(s):  
Sotaro Kondoh ◽  
Kazuo Okanoya ◽  
Ryosuke O. Tachibana

Meter is one of the core features of music perception. It is the cognitive grouping of regular sound sequences, typically for every 2, 3, or 4 beats. Previous studies have suggested that one can not only passively perceive the meter from acoustic cues such as loudness, pitch, and duration of sound elements, but also actively perceive it by paying attention to isochronous sound events without any acoustic cues. Studying the interaction of top-down and bottom-up processing in meter perception leads to understanding the cognitive system’s ability to perceive the entire structure of music. The present study aimed to demonstrate that meter perception requires the top-down process (which maintains and switches attention between cues) as well as the bottom-up process for discriminating acoustic cues. We created a “biphasic” sound stimulus, which consists of successive tone sequences designed to provide cues for both the triple and quadruple meters in different sound attributes, frequency, and duration. Participants were asked to focus on either frequency or duration of the stimulus, and to answer how they perceived meters on a five-point scale (ranged from “strongly triple” to “strongly quadruple”). As a result, we found that participants perceived different meters by switching their attention to specific cues. This result adds evidence to the idea that meter perception involves the interaction between top-down and bottom-up processes.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexis Drain ◽  
Azaadeh Goharzad ◽  
Jennie Qu-Lee ◽  
Jingrun Lin ◽  
Peter Mende-Siedlecki

Racial disparities in pain care may stem, in part, from a perceptual source. While perceptual disruptions in recognizing painful expressions on Black faces have been demonstrated under tightly-controlled conditions (e.g., controlling for low-level stimulus differences in luminance and facial structure, using all male stimuli), these effects may be exacerbated by cues to racial prototypicality. Indeed, both bottom-up (e.g., skin tone, facial structure) and top-down (e.g., stereotype associations between race and gender) factors related to racial prototypicality moderate social perception, with some evidence pointing towards deleterious consequences in the domain of health. Here, we assessed whether these factors shape racial bias in pain perception: we examined the effect of racially prototypical features in Experiments 1 and 2 and target gender in a meta-analysis across five additional experiments. Overall, darker skin tones were associated with more stringent pain perception and more conservative treatment, while racially prototypic structural features exacerbated racial bias in pain outcomes. Moreover, target gender reliably moderated the effect of race on pain outcomes: racial biases in both pain perception and treatment were larger for male (versus female) targets. Taken together, these data demonstrate the overall robustness of racial bias in pain perception and its facilitation of gaps in treatment, but also the extent to which these biases are moderated by both bottom-up and top-down factors related to racial prototypicality.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Gough ◽  
David R. Johnson

The interaction between bottom-up and top-down forces in regulating plant communities is a long-standing topic of interest in ecology. Factorial field experiments examining these factors have been relatively few, but recent meta-analyses provide predictions that can be tested in a range of ecosystems. We tested the prediction that added nutrients would reduce species richness and evenness, while herbivore activity would offset those changes in two tundra plant communities after 11 years. In moist acidic tundra (MAT), herbivores reduced richness more in fertilized plots when mammals were present compared with fertilized plots without herbivores. In dry heath (DH), evenness was significantly reduced in fertilized plots only when herbivores were present, also providing evidence that herbivores enhanced community changes caused by greater nutrient availability. The difference in response between MAT and the meta-analysis predictions appears to be driven by Betula nana, the species that dramatically increased with added nutrients in MAT. Unlike in similar studies and in DH, B. nana is not as palatable as most of the species in the community and is generally avoided by herbivores. These results highlight how the effects of herbivory and nutrients differ across communities and can be affected by the traits of the species present.


2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 138-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mayra C. Vidal ◽  
Shannon M. Murphy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Criscuolo ◽  
Victor Pando-Naude ◽  
Leonardo Bonetti ◽  
Peter Vuust ◽  
Elvira Brattico

AbstractMusical expertise is a model of neuroplasticity associated with pervasive, long-lasting training effects. Indeed, decades of cognitive neuroscience widely investigated brain functional and structural changes associated with musical training, providing a widespread and variegated set of findings. However, several controversial results emerged, leading the neuroscientific community to lack a well-defined neuro-functional-anatomy of musical expertise. Here, we performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of publications investigating brain functional and structural differences between musicians and non-musicians. Eighty-four publications were included in the qualitative synthesis. Coordinate-based meta-analyses were conducted using the anatomic/activation likelihood estimation (ALE) method implemented in GingerALE, with a total of 675 foci, 79 experiments and 2780 participants. Results showed a widespread and complex array of functional and structural changes in musicians’ brains, revealing for the first time a comprehensive picture of the brain plasticity associated with musical training.


2022 ◽  
pp. 102986492110469
Author(s):  
Cristina Harney ◽  
Judith Johnson ◽  
Freya Bailes ◽  
Jelena Havelka

Anxiety is the most commonly diagnosed mental health disorder in the EU and 18% of the US population experiences an anxiety disorder at any one time. However, only 20% of individuals experiencing anxiety receive a formally administered intervention, highlighting a need for evidence-based interventions that can be self-administered. Music listening can be flexibly self-administered and may be useful for anxiety reduction, but further evidence is needed. The current paper addressed this by conducting the first systematic review and meta-analysis of controlled studies testing music listening interventions for naturally occurring state anxiety. A protocol was registered on PROSPERO ID: CRD42018104308. Searches were carried out of the Cochrane Library, Ovid MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Embase, Web of Science and CINAHL databases, yielding 6208 records. After screening for eligibility, 24 controlled studies were included in the review and 21 were included in the meta-analysis. Results of the meta-analyses showed that music listening had an overall significant large effect on alleviating anxiety ( d = −0.77 [95% CI = −1.26, −0.28], k = 21). It was concluded that music listening is effective for reducing anxiety in a range of groups. Further research should focus on clinical groups with diagnosed mental health problems.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document