scholarly journals Differences in Electric Brain Responses to Melodies and Chords

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (10) ◽  
pp. 2251-2262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Koelsch ◽  
Sebastian Jentschke
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Syntactic Processing ◽  
Brain Responses ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Proper Comparison ◽  
Chord Function ◽  
Anterior Negativity

The music we usually listen to in everyday life consists of either single melodies or harmonized melodies (i.e., of melodies “accompanied” by chords). However, differences in the neural mechanisms underlying melodic and harmonic processing have remained largely unknown. Using EEG, this study compared effects of music-syntactic processing between chords and melodies. In melody blocks, sequences consisted of five tones, the final tone being either regular or irregular (p = .5). Analogously, in chord blocks, sequences consisted of five chords, the final chord function being either regular or irregular. Melodies were derived from the top voice of chord sequences, allowing a proper comparison between melodic and harmonic processing. Music-syntactic incongruities elicited an early anterior negativity with a latency of approximately 125 msec in both the melody and the chord conditions. This effect was followed in the chord condition, but not in the melody condition, by an additional negative effect that was maximal at approximately 180 msec. Both effects were maximal at frontal electrodes, but the later effect was more broadly distributed over the scalp than the earlier effect. These findings indicate that melodic information (which is also contained in the top voice of chords) is processed earlier and with partly different neural mechanisms than harmonic information of chords.

Neural Correlates of Syntactic Processing in Two-Year-Olds

2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (10) ◽  
pp. 1667-1678 ◽  
Author(s):  
Regine Oberecker ◽  
Manuela Friedrich ◽  
Angela D. Friederici
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Syntactic Processing ◽  
Early Language ◽  
Late Positivity ◽  
Early Language Development ◽  
First Pass ◽  
Anterior Negativity

Event-related brain potential (ERP) studies of sentence processing in adults have shown that phrase-structure violations are associated with two ERP components: an early left anterior negativity (ELAN) and a late, centro-parietal positivity (P600). Although the ELAN reflects highly automatic first-pass sentence parsing, the P600 has been interpreted to reflect later, more controlled processes. The present ERP study investigates the processing of phrase-structure violations in children below three years of age. Both children (mean age of 2.8 years) and adults passively listened to short active sentences that were either correct or syntactically incorrect. Adults displayed an ELAN that was followed by a P600 to the syntactic violation. Children also demonstrated a biphasic ERP pattern consisting of an early left hemispheric negativity and a late positivity. Both components, however, started later and persisted longer than those observed in adults. The left lateralization of the children's negativity suggests that this component can be interpreted as a child-specific precursor to the ELAN observed in adults. The appearance of the early negativity indicates that the neural mechanisms of syntactic parsing are present, in principle, during early language development.

scholarly journals Maturational Constraints on the Recruitment of Early Processes for Syntactic Processing

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (10) ◽  
pp. 2752-2765 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Pakulak ◽  
Helen J. Neville
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Syntactic Processing ◽  
Neural Organization ◽  
Anterior Negativity

An enduring question in the study of second-language acquisition concerns the relative contributions of age of acquisition (AOA) and ultimate linguistic proficiency to neural organization for second-language processing. Several ERP and neuroimaging studies of second-language learners have found that neural organization for syntactic processing is sensitive to delays in second-language acquisition. However, such delays in second-language acquisition are typically associated with lower language proficiency, rendering it difficult to assess whether differences in AOA or proficiency lead to these effects. Here we examined the effects of delayed second-language acquisition while controlling for proficiency differences by examining participants who differ in AOA but who were matched for proficiency in the same language. We compared the ERP response to auditory English phrase structure violations in a group of late learners of English matched for grammatical proficiency with a group of English native speakers. In the native speaker group, violations elicited a bilateral and prolonged anterior negativity, with onset at 100 msec, followed by a posterior positivity (P600). In contrast, in the nonnative speaker group, violations did not elicit the early anterior negativity, but did elicit a P600 which was more widespread spatially and temporally than that of the native speaker group. These results suggest that neural organization for syntactic processing is sensitive to delays in language acquisition independently of proficiency level. More specifically, they suggest that both early and later syntactic processes are sensitive to maturational constraints. These results also suggest that late learners who reach a high level of second-language proficiency rely on different neural mechanisms than native speakers of that language.

scholarly journals Neural mechanisms of syntactic processing revealed by fMRI

2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-262
Author(s):  
Ryuta Kinno ◽  
Kenjiro Ono
Keyword(s):  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Syntactic Processing

scholarly journals Investigation of working memory networks for verbal and rhythmic stimuli

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua D. Hoddinott ◽  
Dirk Schuit ◽  
Jessica A. Grahn
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Basal Ganglia ◽  
Significant Interaction ◽  
Verbal Working Memory ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Musical Rhythm ◽  
Brain Responses ◽  
Fmri Study ◽  
Spontaneous Behavior ◽  
With Memory

AbstractAuditory working memory is often conceived of as a unitary capacity, with memory for different auditory materials (syllables, pitches, rhythms) thought to rely on similar neural mechanisms. One spontaneous behavior observed in working memory studies is ‘chunking’. For example, individuals often recount digit sequences in groups, or chunks, of 3 to 4 digits, and this chunking improves performance. Chunking may also operate in musical rhythm, with beats acting as chunk boundaries for tones in rhythmic sequences. Similar to chunking, beat-based structure in rhythms also improves performance. Thus, beat processing may rely on the same mechanisms that underlie chunking of verbal material. The current fMRI study examined whether beat perception is a type of chunking, measuring brain responses to chunked and unchunked letter sequences relative to beat-based and nonbeat-based rhythmic sequences. Participants completed a sequence discrimination task, and comparisons between stimulus encoding, maintenance, and discrimination were made for both rhythmic and verbal sequences. Overall, rhythm and verbal working memory networks overlapped substantially. When comparing rhythmic and verbal conditions, rhythms activated basal ganglia, supplementary motor area, and anterior insula, compared to letter strings, during encoding and discrimination. Letter strings compared to rhythms activated bilateral auditory cortex during encoding, and parietal cortex, precuneus, and middle frontal gyri during discrimination. Importantly, there was a significant interaction in the basal ganglia during encoding: activation for beat-based rhythms was greater than for nonbeat-based rhythms, but verbal chunked and unchunked conditions did not differ. The significant interaction indicates that beat perception is not simply a case of chunking, suggesting a dissociation between beat processing and grouping mechanisms that warrants further exploration.

scholarly journals Finding the P3 in the P600: Decoding shared neural mechanisms of responses to syntactic violations and oddball target detection

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jona Sassenhagen ◽  
Christian J. Fiebach
Keyword(s):  
Direct Evidence ◽  
Pattern Analysis ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Multivariate Pattern Analysis ◽  
Brain Response ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Brain Responses ◽  
Multivariate Pattern ◽  
Visual Oddball ◽  
Substantial Degree

AbstractThe P600 Event-Related Brain Potential, elicited by syntactic violations in sentences, is generally interpreted as indicating language-specific structural/combinatorial processing, with far-reaching implications for models of language. P600 effects are also often taken as evidence for language-like grammars in non-linguistic domains like music or arithmetic. An alternative account, however, interprets the P600 as a P3, a domain-general brain response to salience. Using time-generalized multivariate pattern analysis, we demonstrate that P3 EEG patterns, elicited in a visual Oddball experiment, account for the P600 effect elicited in a syntactic violation experiment: P3 pattern-trained MVPA can classify P600 trials just as well as P600-trained ones. A second study replicates and generalizes this finding, and demonstrates its specificity by comparing it to face- and semantic mismatch-associated EEG responses. These results indicate that P3 and P600 share neural patterns to a substantial degree, calling into question the interpretation of P600 as a language-specific brain response and instead strengthening its association with the P3. More generally, our data indicate that observing P600-like brain responses provides no direct evidence for the presence of language-like grammars, in language or elsewhere.

scholarly journals Neural Mechanisms of Emotion Regulation Moderate the Predictive Value of Affective and Value-Related Brain Responses to Persuasive Messages

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (7) ◽  
pp. 1293-1300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce P. Doré ◽  
Steven H. Tompson ◽  
Matthew B. O'Donnell ◽  
Lawrence C. An ◽  
Victor Strecher ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Predictive Value ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Persuasive Messages ◽  
Brain Responses

scholarly journals Children with Specific Language Impairment Also Show Impairment of Music-syntactic Processing

2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (11) ◽  
pp. 1940-1951 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Jentschke ◽  
Stefan Koelsch ◽  
Stephan Sallat ◽  
Angela D. Friederici
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Musical Training ◽  
Processing System ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Syntactic Processing ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Language And Music ◽  
Anterior Negativity

Both language and music consist of sequences that are structured according to syntactic regularities. We used two specific event-related brain potential (ERP) components to investigate music-syntactic processing in children: the ERAN (early right anterior negativity) and the N5. The neural resources underlying these processes have been posited to overlap with those involved in the processing of linguistic syntax. Thus, we expected children with specific language impairment (SLI, which is characterized by deficient processing of linguistic syntax) to demonstrate difficulties with music-syntactic processing. Such difficulties were indeed observed in the neural correlates of music-syntactic processing: neither an ERAN nor an N5 was elicited in children with SLI, whereas both components were evoked in age-matched control children with typical language development. Moreover, the amplitudes of ERAN and N5 were correlated with subtests of a language development test. These data provide evidence for a strong interrelation between the language and the music processing system, thereby setting the ground for possible effects of musical training in SLI therapy.

scholarly journals Neural mechanisms of overt attention shifts to emotional faces

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louisa Kulke
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Visual Saliency ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Emotional Faces ◽  
Overt Attention ◽  
Early Posterior Negativity ◽  
Attention Shifts

Emotional faces draw attention and eye-movements towards them. However, the neural mechanisms of attention have mainly been investigated during fixation, which is uncommon in everyday life where people move their eyes to shift attention to faces. Therefore, the current study combined eye-tracking and Electroencephalography (EEG) to measure neural mechanisms of overt attention shifts to faces with happy, neutral and angry expressions, allowing participants to move their eyes freely towards the stimuli. Saccade latencies towards peripheral faces did not differ depending on expression and early neural response (P1) amplitudes and latencies were unaffected. However, the later occurring Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) was significantly larger for emotional than for neutral faces. This response occurs after saccades towards the faces. Therefore, emotion modulations only occurred after an overt shift of gaze towards the stimulus had already been completed. Visual saliency rather than emotional content may therefore drive early saccades, while later top-down processes reflect emotion processing.

scholarly journals Online Processing of Temporal Agreement in a Grammatical Tone Language: An ERP Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Tsiwah ◽  
Roelien Bastiaanse ◽  
Jacolien van Rij ◽  
Srđan Popov
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Syntactic Processing ◽  
Temporal Relations ◽  
African Language ◽  
Tone Language ◽  
Online Processing ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Electrophysiological Studies ◽  
Present Context ◽  
Anterior Negativity

Previous electrophysiological studies that have examined temporal agreement violations in (Indo-European) languages that use grammatical affixes to mark time reference, have found a Left Anterior Negativity (LAN) and/or P600 ERP components, reflecting morpho-syntactic and syntactic processing, respectively. The current study investigates the electrophysiological processing of temporal relations in an African language (Akan) that uses grammatical tone, rather than morphological inflection, for time reference. Twenty-four native speakers of Akan listened to sentences with time reference violations. Our results demonstrate that a violation of a present context by a past verb yields a P600 time-locked to the verb. There was no such effect when a past context was violated by a present verb. In conclusion, while there are similarities in both Akan and Indo-European languages, as far as the modulation of the P600 effect is concerned, the nature of this effect seems to be different for these languages.

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