Automatic and Controlled Processing of Melodic Contour and Interval Information Measured by Electrical Brain Activity

2002 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 430-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurel J. Trainor ◽  
Kelly L. McDonald ◽  
Claude Alain
Keyword(s):  
Brain Activity ◽  
Musical Training ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Absolute Pitch ◽  
Controlled Processing ◽  
Electrical Brain Activity ◽  
Pitch Information ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Brain

Most work on how pitch is encoded in the auditory cortex has focused on tonotopic (absolute) pitch maps. However, melodic information is thought to be encoded in the brain in two different “relative pitch” forms, a domain-general contour code (up/down pattern of pitch changes) and a music-specific interval code (exact pitch distances between notes). Event-related potentials were analyzed in nonmusicians from both passive and active oddball tasks where either the contour or the interval of melody—final notes was occasionally altered. The occasional deviant notes generated a right frontal positivity peaking around 350 msec and a central parietal P3b peaking around 580 msec that were present only when participants focused their attention on the auditory stimuli. Both types of melodic information were encoded automatically in the absence of absolute pitch cues, as indexed by a mismatch negativity wave recorded during the passive conditions. The results indicate that even in the absence of musical training, the brain is set up to automatically encode music-specific melodic information, even when absolute pitch information is not available.

scholarly journals Distinct Patterns of Neural Activity during Memory Formation of Nonwords versus Words

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (11) ◽  
pp. 1776-1789 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leun J. Otten ◽  
Josefin Sveen ◽  
Angela H. Quayle
Keyword(s):  
Neural Activity ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Item Type ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Memory Formation ◽  
Electrical Brain Activity ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Neural Underpinnings ◽  
Incidental Encoding ◽  
The Brain

Research into the neural underpinnings of memory formation has focused on the encoding of familiar verbal information. Here, we address how the brain supports the encoding of novel information that does not have meaning. Electrical brain activity was recorded from the scalps of healthy young adults while they performed an incidental encoding task (syllable judgments) on separate series of words and “nonwords” (nonsense letter strings that are orthographically legal and pronounceable). Memory for the items was then probed with a recognition memory test. For words as well as nonwords, event-related potentials differed depending on whether an item would subsequently be remembered or forgotten. However, the polarity and timing of the effect varied across item type. For words, subsequently remembered items showed the usually observed positive-going, frontally distributed modulation from around 600 msec after word onset. For nonwords, by contrast, a negative-going, spatially widespread modulation predicted encoding success from 1000 msec onward. Nonwords also showed a modulation shortly after item onset. These findings imply that the brain supports the encoding of familiar and unfamiliar letter strings in qualitatively different ways, including the engagement of distinct neural activity at different points in time. The processing of semantic attributes plays an important role in the encoding of words and the associated positive frontal modulation.

scholarly journals Looking for effects of qualia on event-related brain potentials of close others in search for a cause of the similarity of qualia assumed across individuals

F1000Research ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 316
Author(s):  
Sheila Bouten ◽  
Hugo Pantecouteau ◽  
J. Bruno Debruille
Keyword(s):  
Time Window ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
The Other ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Frontal Electrode ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Brain

Qualia, the individual instances of subjective conscious experience, are private events. However, in everyday life, we assume qualia of others and their perceptual worlds, to be similar to ours. One way this similarity is possible is if qualia of others somehow contribute to the production of qualia by our own brain and vice versa. To test this hypothesis, we focused on the mean voltages of event-related potentials (ERPs) in the time-window of the P600 component, whose amplitude correlates positively with conscious awareness. These ERPs were elicited by images of the international affective picture system in 16 pairs of friends, siblings or couples going side by side through hyperscanning without having to interact. Each of the 32 members of these 16 pairs faced one half of the screen and could not see what the other member was presented with on the other half. One stimulus occurred on each half simultaneously. The sameness of these stimulus pairs was manipulated as well as the participants’ belief in that sameness by telling subjects’ pairs that they were going to be presented with the same stimuli in two blocks and with different ones in the two others. ERPs were more positive at all electrode subsets for stimulus pairs that were inconsistent with the belief than for those that were consistent. In the N400 time window, at frontal electrode sites, ERPs were again more positive for inconsistent than for consistent stimuli. As participants had no way to see the stimulus their partner was presented with and thus no way to detect inconsistence, these data might reveal an impact of the qualia of a person on the brain activity of another. Such impact could provide a research avenue when trying to explain the similarity of qualia across individuals.

scholarly journals Material-specific Neural Correlates of Recollection: Objects, Words, and Faces

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 1405-1418 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giulia Galli ◽  
Leun J. Otten
Keyword(s):  
Brain Activity ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Stimulus Material ◽  
Level Control ◽  
Electrical Brain Activity ◽  
Crucial Difference ◽  
Related Potentials

It is unclear how neural correlates of episodic memory retrieval differ depending on the type of material that is retrieved. Here, we used a source memory task to compare electrical brain activity for the recollection of three types of stimulus material. At study, healthy adults judged how well visually presented objects, words, and faces fitted with paired auditorily presented names of locations. At test, only visual stimuli were presented. The task was to decide whether an item had been presented earlier and, if so, what location had been paired with the item. Stimulus types were intermixed across trials in Experiment 1 and presented in separate study–test lists in Experiment 2. A graded pattern of memory performance was observed across objects, words, and faces in both experiments. Between 300 and 500 msec, event-related potentials for recollected objects and faces showed a more frontal scalp distribution compared to words in both experiments. Later in the recording epoch, all three stimulus materials elicited recollection effects over left posterior scalp sites. However, these effects extended more anteriorly for objects and faces when stimulus categories were blocked. These findings demonstrate that the neural correlates of recollection are material specific, the crucial difference being between pictorial and verbal material. Faces do not appear to have a special status. The sensitivity of recollection effects to the kind of experimental design suggests that, in addition to type of stimulus material, higher-level control processes affect the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying episodic retrieval.

The Similarity of Brain Activity Associated with True and False Recognition Memory Depends On Test Format

1997 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 250-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcia K. Johnson ◽  
Scott F. Nolde ◽  
Mara Mather ◽  
John Kounios ◽  
Daniel L. Schacter ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Source Monitoring ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Emission Tomography ◽  
Test Format ◽  
Test Items ◽  
Positron Emission ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
False Recognitions ◽  
The Brain

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were compared for correct recognitions of previously presented words and false recognitions of associatively related, nonpresented words (lures) When the test items were presented blocked by test type (old, new, lure), waveforms for old and lure items were different, especially at frontal and left parietal electrode sites, consistent with previous positron emission tomography (PET) data (Schacter, Reiman, et al, 1996) When the test format randomly intermixed the types of items, waveforms for old and lure items were more similar We suggest that test format affects the type of processing subjects engage in, consistent with expectations from the source-monitoring framework (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993) These results also indicate that brain activity as assessed by neuroimaging designs requiring blocked presentation of trials (e.g., PET) do not necessarily reflect the brain activity that occurs in cognitive-behavioral paradigms, in which types of test trials are typically intermixed

Effects of antipsychotics on cognitive functions: an ERP study in healthy controls

2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (S2) ◽  
pp. 1267-1267 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Mucci ◽  
S. Galderisi ◽  
A. Vignapiano ◽  
D. Russo ◽  
P. Romano ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Drug Effect ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Favorable Effect ◽  
Cognitive Effects ◽  
Cortical Sources ◽  
Electrical Brain Activity ◽  
Functional Measure ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Automatic Attention

IntroductionClinical studies on cognitive effects of second generation antipsychotics produced disappointing findings probably due to the heterogeneity of the clinical populations under investigation, as well as to poor sensitivity of neurocognitive indices. Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) provide a functional measure of electrical brain activity time-locked to discrete stages of information processing. They have been widely used as putative biological markers of cognitive abnormalities in schizophrenia and represent useful indices in the investigation of the cognitive effects of psychotropic drugs.ObjectivesThe present study investigated the effect of risperidone, haloperidol and placebo on N1 and P3 in male healthy subjects.MethodsERPs were recorded during a three-tone oddball task in which target, standard and rare-nontarget tones were randomly presented. Subjects had to press a button when hearing a target tone. Amplitude and topography of the ERP component maps at peak latencies were compared across conditions. If a significant drug effect was obtained, changes in the cortical sources of the corresponding ERP component were analyzed using Low-Resolution Electromagnetic Tomography (LORETA).ResultsThe amplitude of N1 for attended stimuli and of P3 for rare-nontargets (P3a) was significantly increased only by risperidone. No significant change was observed in overall topographic features and in LORETA cortical sources of the same components. No significant drug effect was demonstrated for the latency of all the investigated components and for P3b amplitude.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that risperidone has a favorable effect on early attention processes and automatic attention allocation.

scholarly journals Brain activity in an awake chimpanzee in response to the sound of her own name

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ari Ueno ◽  
Satoshi Hirata ◽  
Kohki Fuwa ◽  
Keiko Sugama ◽  
Kiyo Kusunoki ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Brain Activity ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Stimulus Onset ◽  
Auditory Stimuli ◽  
Negative Shift ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Own Name ◽  
Group Member ◽  
The Brain

The brain activity of a fully awake chimpanzee being presented with her name was investigated. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured for each of the following auditory stimuli: the vocal sound of the subject's own name (SON), the vocal sound of a familiar name of another group member, the vocal sound of an unfamiliar name and a non-vocal sound. Some differences in ERP waveforms were detected between kinds of stimuli at latencies at which P3 and Nc components are typically observed in humans. Following stimulus onset, an Nc-like negative shift at approximately 500 ms latency was observed, particularly in response to SON. Such specific ERP patterns suggest that the chimpanzee processes her name differently from other sounds.

Brain Imaging Technologies: How, What, When and Why?

1999 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evian Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Brain Imaging ◽  
Single Photon ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Photon Emission ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Emission Computed Tomography ◽  
Imaging Technologies ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
The Brain

Objective: Innovations in physics and computing technology over the past two decades have provided a powerful means of exploring the overall structure and function of the brain using a range of computerised brain imaging technologies (BITs). These technologies offer the means to elucidate the patterns of pathophysiology underlying mental illness. The aim of this paper is to explore the current status and some of the future directions in the application of BITs to psychiatry. Method: Brain imaging technologies provide unambiguous measures of brain structure (computerised tomography and magnetic resonance imaging [MRI]) and also index complementary measures of when (electroencephalography, event related potentials, magnetoencephalography) and where (functional MRI, single photon emission computed tomography, positron emission tomography) aspects of brain activity occur. Results: The structural technologies are primarily used to exclude a biological cause in cases of a suspected psychiatric disorder. The functional technologies show considerable potential to delineate subgroups of patients (that may have different treatment outcomes), and evaluate objectively the effects of treatment on the brain as a system. What is seldom emphasised in the literature are the numerous inconsistencies, the lack of specificity of findings and the simplistic interpretation of much of the data. Conclusion: Brain imaging technologies show considerable utility, but we are barely scratching the surface of this potential. Simplistic over-interpretation of results can be minimised by: replication of BIT findings, judicious combination of complementary methodologies, use of appropriate activation tasks, analysis with respect to large normative databases, control for performance, examining the data ‘beyond averaging’, delineating clinical subtypes, exploring the severity of symptoms, specificity of findings and effects of treatment in the same patients. The technological innovation of BITs still far outstrips the sophistication of their use; it is essential that the meaning and mechanisms underlying BITmeasures are always evaluated with respect to prevailing models of brain function across disciplines.

scholarly journals Decoding explicit and implicit representations of health and taste attributes of foods in the human brain

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elektra Schubert ◽  
Daniel Rosenblatt ◽  
Djamila Eliby ◽  
Yoshihisa Kashima ◽  
Hinze Hogendoorn ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Brain Activity ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Food Choices ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Snack Foods ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Obesity Interventions ◽  
Cue Processing ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Healthy Participants

Obesity has become a significant problem word-wide and is strongly linked to poor food choices. Even in healthy individuals, taste perceptions often drive dietary decisions more strongly than healthiness. This study tested whether health and taste representations can be directly decoded from brain activity, both when explicitly considered, and when implicitly processed for decision-making. We used multivariate support vector regression for event-related potentials (as measured by the electroencephalogram) occurring in the first second of food cue processing to predict ratings of tastiness and healthiness. In Experiment 1, 37 healthy participants viewed images of various foods and explicitly rated their tastiness and healthiness, whereas in Experiment 2, 89 healthy participants indicated their desire to consume snack foods, with no explicit instruction to consider tastiness or healthiness. In Experiment 1 both attributes could be decoded, with taste information being available earlier than health. In Experiment 2, both dimensions were also decodable, and their significant decoding preceded the decoding of decisions (i.e., desire to consume the food). However, in Experiment 2, health representations were decodable earlier than taste representations. These results suggest that health information is activated in the brain during the early stages of dietary decisions, which is promising for designing obesity interventions aimed at quickly activating health awareness.

scholarly journals Impaired conscious access and abnormal attentional amplification in schizophrenia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
L Berkovitch ◽  
A Del Cul ◽  
M Maheu ◽  
S Dehaene
Keyword(s):  
Brain Activity ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Conscious Perception ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Essentially Normal ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
P3 Component ◽  
The Brain

AbstractPrevious research suggests that the conscious perception of a masked stimulus is impaired in schizophrenia, while unconscious bottom-up processing of the same stimulus, as assessed by subliminal priming, can be preserved. Here, we test this postulated dissociation between intact bottom-up and impaired top-down processing and evaluate its brain mechanisms using high-density recordings of event-related potentials. Sixteen patients with schizophrenia and sixteen controls were exposed to peripheral digits with various degrees of visibility, under conditions of either focused attention or distraction by another task. In the distraction condition, the brain activity evoked by masked digits was drastically reduced in both groups, but early bottom-up visual activation could still be detected and did not differ between patients and controls. By contrast, under focused top-down attention, a major impairment was observed: in patients, contrary to controls, the late non-linear ignition associated with the P3 component was reduced. Interestingly, the patients showed an essentially normal attentional amplification of the PI and N2 components. These results suggest that some but not all top-down attentional amplification processes are impaired in schizophrenia, while bottom-up processing seems to be preserved.

scholarly journals Conformity and Reaction to Error: An ERPs Study

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
I Golovanova ◽  
M Petrov ◽  
K Bakuleva ◽  
N Andriyanova
Keyword(s):  
Brain Activity ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Interpersonal Behavior ◽  
Error Processing ◽  
P300 Wave ◽  
Majority Opinion ◽  
Error Related Negativity ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Processing Event ◽  
The Brain

This article is devoted to the analysis of cognitive indicators of conformal behavior. It presents the results of the study of EEG-correlates of conformity. The hypothesis of the study is that people who tend to the conformal behavior have a similar way of response on the errors and disagreement with the majority opinion. Theexperiment involved 20 participants: 11 – nonconformists, 9 – conformists according to tests (‘Interpersonal Behavior Circle’ by T. Leary and ‘Portrait Values Questionnaire’ by S. Schwartz). Participants took part in two types of tasks: arithmetic tasks and attractiveness evaluation. After solving the tasks, participants were given feedback about right/wrong decisions in arithmetic tasks, and agreement/disagreement with the majority opinion in the evaluation of people’s attractiveness. This study analyzed event-related potentials (ERPs) in the case of error or disagreement with the majority opinion. The results of the study showed the differences in the indicators of bioelectric brain activity between conformal and nonconformal participants after the disagreement with the majority opinion. Conformal participants demonstrate higher amplitude of P300 wave upon presentation of the feedback of the disagreement with the majority opinion. Thus, the conformal behavior in a situation of disagreement with others’ opinion accompanied by specific ERP patterns of the brain associated with the correction of behavior. Keywords: conformity, error processing, event-related potentials, P300, error-related negativity

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