scholarly journals Functional connectivity in human auditory networks and the origins of variation in the transmission of musical systems

eLife ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimo Lumaca ◽  
Boris Kleber ◽  
Elvira Brattico ◽  
Peter Vuust ◽  
Giosue Baggio
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Processing ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Structural Modification ◽  
Laboratory Model ◽  
Signaling Game ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
The Social ◽  
Musical Systems ◽  
Processing Mechanisms

Music producers, whether original composers or performers, vary in their ability to acquire and faithfully transmit music. This form of variation may serve as a mechanism for the emergence of new traits in musical systems. In this study, we aim to investigate whether individual differences in the social learning and transmission of music relate to intrinsic neural dynamics of auditory processing systems. We combined auditory and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with an interactive laboratory model of cultural transmission, the signaling game, in an experiment with a large cohort of participants (N=51). We found that the degree of interhemispheric rs-FC within fronto-temporal auditory networks predicts—weeks after scanning—learning, transmission, and structural modification of an artificial tone system. Our study introduces neuroimaging in cultural transmission research and points to specific neural auditory processing mechanisms that constrain and drive variation in the cultural transmission and regularization of musical systems.

scholarly journals Perceiving actions before they happen: psychological dimensions scaffold neural action prediction

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A Thornton ◽  
Diana I Tamir
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Resonance Imaging ◽  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Social World ◽  
Action Space ◽  
Action Prediction ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
The Social ◽  
Psychological Dimensions ◽  
The Brain

Abstract The social world buzzes with action. People constantly walk, talk, eat, work, play, snooze and so on. To interact with others successfully, we need to both understand their current actions and predict their future actions. Here we used functional neuroimaging to test the hypothesis that people do both at the same time: when the brain perceives an action, it simultaneously encodes likely future actions. Specifically, we hypothesized that the brain represents perceived actions using a map that encodes which actions will occur next: the six-dimensional Abstraction, Creation, Tradition, Food(-relevance), Animacy and Spiritualism Taxonomy (ACT-FAST) action space. Within this space, the closer two actions are, the more likely they are to precede or follow each other. To test this hypothesis, participants watched a video featuring naturalistic sequences of actions while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning. We first use a decoding model to demonstrate that the brain uses ACT-FAST to represent current actions. We then successfully predicted as-yet unseen actions, up to three actions into the future, based on their proximity to the current action’s coordinates in ACT-FAST space. This finding suggests that the brain represents actions using a six-dimensional action space that gives people an automatic glimpse of future actions.

scholarly journals Enlarged Ingroup Effect: How a Shared Culture Shapes In-Group Perception

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paola Rigo ◽  
Bindiya L. Ragunath ◽  
Marc H. Bornstein ◽  
Gianluca Esposito
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Environmental Context ◽  
Social Perceptions ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
Multicultural Society ◽  
Emergent Phenomenon ◽  
The Social ◽  
Shared Culture ◽  
Group Members

ABSTRACTIncreasing levels of migration and constant redefinition of a ‘sense of belonging’ characterize modern societies. Thus, social perception of people from different ethnicities as in-group or out-group members is influenced by a shared culture that might go beyond ethnicity. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we aim to study how sharing a common culture changes the social perceptions of in-groups and out-groups. We presented same- and different-race faces to young adults living in an integrated multicultural society. Same- and different-race faces were primed by images of environmental context that promotes identification with the participants’ ethnicity or a common shared culture.We found that same and different-race faces recruit similar brain networks only when associated with an environmental context, which promoted identification with a common shared culture. These results support a possible emergent phenomenon in multicultural societies that we call enlarged multi-ethnic in-group effect, which may form the basis of a potential new way to categorize oneself and others in terms of membership.

scholarly journals What is Involved and What is Necessary for Complex Linguistic and Nonlinguistic Auditory Processing: Evidence from Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Lesion Data

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 799-816 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederic Dick ◽  
Ayse Pinar Saygin ◽  
Gaspare Galati ◽  
Sabrina Pitzalis ◽  
Simone Bentrovato ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Resonance Imaging ◽  
Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging ◽  
Auditory Processing ◽  
Right Hemisphere ◽  
Blood Oxygenation ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
Environmental Sound ◽  
Environmental Sounds

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in conjunction with a voxel-based approach to lesion symptom mapping to quantitatively evaluate the similarities and differences between brain areas involved in language and environmental sound comprehension. In general, we found that language and environmental sounds recruit highly overlapping cortical regions, with cross-domain differences being graded rather than absolute. Within language-based regions of interest, we found that in the left hemisphere, language and environmental sound stimuli evoked very similar volumes of activation, whereas in the right hemisphere, there was greater activation for environmental sound stimuli. Finally, lesion symptom maps of aphasic patients based on environmental sounds or linguistic deficits [Saygin, A. P., Dick, F., Wilson, S. W., Dronkers, N. F., & Bates, E. Shared neural resources for processing language and environmental sounds: Evidence from aphasia. Brain, 126, 928–945, 2003] were generally predictive of the extent of blood oxygenation level dependent fMRI activation across these regions for sounds and linguistic stimuli in young healthy subjects.

scholarly journals Graded Visual Attention Modulates Brain Responses Evoked by Task-irrelevant Auditory Pitch Changes

2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (12) ◽  
pp. 1819-1828 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gunes Yucel ◽  
Christopher Petty ◽  
Gregory McCarthy ◽  
Aysenil Belger
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Processing ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Tracking Task ◽  
Central Auditory Processing ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
Brain Responses ◽  
Cortical Regions ◽  
Task Irrelevant

Previous studies suggested that auditory change-specific neural responses are attention-independent and reflect central auditory processing. The automaticity of the brain's response to infrequent changes in pitch within a series of auditory tone pips was examined in parallel functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and event-related potential (ERP) studies. Subjects performed a continuous perceptual-motor visual tracking task at two levels of difficulty while simultaneously hearing a series of task-irrelevant standard tone pips and infrequent pitch-deviant tones. fMRI results revealed that the unattended pitch-deviant tones strongly activated superior temporal and frontal cortical regions. These activations were significantly modulated by the tracking difficulty of the primary task. ERP results revealed that the amplitude of the scalp-negative component evoked by deviant tones (MMN) was attenuated during the more difficult tracking task. Our results demonstrate that the brain's response to task-irrelevant sensory changes is strongly influenced by intermodal attentional demands.

scholarly journals Cultural Transmission and Evolution of Melodic Structures in Multi-generational Signaling Games

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 406-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimo Lumaca ◽  
Giosuè Baggio
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Laboratory Model ◽  
Signaling Games ◽  
Good Continuation ◽  
Cognitive Constraints ◽  
Signaling Systems ◽  
Musical Systems

It has been proposed that languages evolve by adapting to the perceptual and cognitive constraints of the human brain, developing, in the course of cultural transmission, structural regularities that maximize or optimize learnability and ease of processing. To what extent would perceptual and cognitive constraints similarly affect the evolution of musical systems? We conducted an experiment on the cultural evolution of artificial melodic systems, using multi-generational signaling games as a laboratory model of cultural transmission. Signaling systems, using five-tone sequences as signals, and basic and compound emotions as meanings, were transmitted from senders to receivers along diffusion chains in which the receiver in each game became the sender in the next game. During transmission, structural regularities accumulated in the signaling systems, following principles of proximity, symmetry, and good continuation. Although the compositionality of signaling systems did not increase significantly across generations, we did observe a significant increase in similarity among signals from the same set. We suggest that our experiment tapped into the cognitive and perceptual constraints operative in the cultural evolution of musical systems, which may differ from the mechanisms at play in language evolution and change.

scholarly journals A Simultaneous [11C]Raclopride Positron Emission Tomography and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Investigation of Striatal Dopamine Binding in Autism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole R. Zürcher ◽  
Erin C. Walsh ◽  
Rachel D. Phillips ◽  
Paul M. Cernasov ◽  
Chieh-En J. Tseng ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Resonance Imaging ◽  
Positron Emission Tomography ◽  
Social Motivation ◽  
Striatal Dopamine ◽  
Emission Tomography ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
Positron Emission ◽  
The Social ◽  
Da Release

Background: The social motivation hypothesis of autism suggests that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by impaired motivation to seek out social experience early in life that interferes with the development of social functioning. This framework posits that impaired mesolimbic dopamine (DA) function underlies compromised responses to social rewards in ASD. Although this hypothesis is supported by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, no molecular imaging study has evaluated striatal dopamine functioning in response to rewards in ASD. Methods: This study evaluated striatal dopaminergic functioning during incentive processing in ASD using simultaneous positron emission tomography (PET) and fMRI using the D2/D3 dopamine receptor antagonist [11C]raclopride. Using a bolus + infusion protocol, voxel-wise binding potential (BPND) was compared between groups (Controls=12, ASD=10) in the striatum. Results: Relative to controls, the ASD group demonstrated relatively decreased phasic DA release to incentives in the right and left putamen and left caudate. Striatal clusters showing significant between-group BPND differences were used as seeds in whole-brain fMRI general functional connectivity analyses. This revealed increased connectivity between the PET-derived right putamen seed and clusters in the precuneus and right insula in the ASD group. Within the ASD group, decreased phasic DA release in the left putamen was related to poorer theory-of-mind skills. Conclusions: ASD was characterized by impaired striatal phasic DA release and abnormally increased functional connectivity, providing support for the social motivation hypothesis of autism. PET measures of dopamine receptor target occupancy may be suitable to evaluate novel ASD therapeutics targeting the striatal dopamine system.

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