Playing Music for a Smarter Ear: Cognitive, Perceptual and Neurobiological Evidence
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Abstract:
Human hearing depends on a combination of cognitive and sensory processes that function by means of an interactive circuitry of bottom-up and top-down neural pathways, extending from the cochlea to the cortex and back again. Given that similar neural pathways are recruited to process sounds related to both music and language, it is not surprising that the auditory expertise gained over years of consistent music practice fine-tunes the human auditory system in a comprehensive fashion, strengthening neurobiological and cognitive underpinnings of both music and speech processing. In this review we argue not only that common neural mechanisms for speech and music exist, but that experience in music leads to enhancements in sensory and cognitive contributors to speech processing. Of specific interest is the potential for music training to bolster neural mechanisms that undergird language-related skills, such as reading and hearing speech in background noise, which are critical to academic progress, emotional health, and vocational success.Keywords:
Music Perception
Auditory perception
Sensory Processing
Auditory scene analysis
Auditory stream segregation (or streaming) is a phenomenon in which 2 or more repeating sounds differing in at least 1 acoustic attribute are perceived as 2 or more separate sound sources (i.e., streams). This article selectively reviews psychophysical and computational studies of streaming and comprehensively reviews more recent neurophysiological studies that have provided important insights into the mechanisms of streaming. On the basis of these studies, segregation of sounds is likely to occur beginning in the auditory periphery and continuing at least to primary auditory cortex for simple cues such as pure-tone frequency but at stages as high as secondary auditory cortex for more complex cues such as periodicity pitch. Attention-dependent and perception-dependent processes are likely to take place in primary or secondary auditory cortex and may also involve higher level areas outside of auditory cortex. Topographic maps of acoustic attributes, stimulus-specific suppression, and competition between representations are among the neurophysiological mechanisms that likely contribute to streaming. A framework for future research is proposed.
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Auditory perception
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The ability to parse a complex auditory scene into perceptual objects is facilitated by a hierarchical auditory system. Successive stages in the hierarchy transform an auditory scene of multiple overlapping sources, from peripheral tonotopically based representations in the auditory nerve, into perceptually distinct auditory-object-based representations in the auditory cortex. Here, using magnetoencephalography recordings from men and women, we investigate how a complex acoustic scene consisting of multiple speech sources is represented in distinct hierarchical stages of the auditory cortex. Using systems-theoretic methods of stimulus reconstruction, we show that the primary-like areas in the auditory cortex contain dominantly spectrotemporal-based representations of the entire auditory scene. Here, both attended and ignored speech streams are represented with almost equal fidelity, and a global representation of the full auditory scene with all its streams is a better candidate neural representation than that of individual streams being represented separately. We also show that higher-order auditory cortical areas, by contrast, represent the attended stream separately and with significantly higher fidelity than unattended streams. Furthermore, the unattended background streams are more faithfully represented as a single unsegregated background object rather than as separated objects. Together, these findings demonstrate the progression of the representations and processing of a complex acoustic scene up through the hierarchy of the human auditory cortex. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Using magnetoencephalography recordings from human listeners in a simulated cocktail party environment, we investigate how a complex acoustic scene consisting of multiple speech sources is represented in separate hierarchical stages of the auditory cortex. We show that the primary-like areas in the auditory cortex use a dominantly spectrotemporal-based representation of the entire auditory scene, with both attended and unattended speech streams represented with almost equal fidelity. We also show that higher-order auditory cortical areas, by contrast, represent an attended speech stream separately from, and with significantly higher fidelity than, unattended speech streams. Furthermore, the unattended background streams are represented as a single undivided background object rather than as distinct background objects.
Magnetoencephalography
Auditory scene analysis
Auditory System
Auditory perception
Auditory imagery
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Selective auditory attention
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Magnetoencephalography
Auditory scene analysis
Auditory imagery
Auditory perception
Auditory System
Selective auditory attention
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Tone (literature)
Auditory perception
Tone burst
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Abstract The ability to parse a complex auditory scene into perceptual objects is facilitated by a hierarchical auditory system. Successive stages in the hierarchy transform an auditory scene of multiple overlapping sources, from peripheral tonotopically-based representations in the auditory nerve, into perceptually distinct auditory-objects based representation in auditory cortex. Here, using magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings from human subjects, both men and women, we investigate how a complex acoustic scene consisting of multiple speech sources is represented in distinct hierarchical stages of auditory cortex. Using systems-theoretic methods of stimulus reconstruction, we show that the primary-like areas in auditory cortex contain dominantly spectro-temporal based representations of the entire auditory scene. Here, both attended and ignored speech streams are represented with almost equal fidelity, and a global representation of the full auditory scene with all its streams is a better candidate neural representation than that of individual streams being represented separately. In contrast, we also show that higher order auditory cortical areas represent the attended stream separately, and with significantly higher fidelity, than unattended streams. Furthermore, the unattended background streams are more faithfully represented as a single unsegregated background object rather than as separated objects. Taken together, these findings demonstrate the progression of the representations and processing of a complex acoustic scene up through the hierarchy of human auditory cortex. Significance Statement Using magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings from human listeners in a simulated cocktail party environment, we investigate how a complex acoustic scene consisting of multiple speech sources is represented in separate hierarchical stages of auditory cortex. We show that the primary-like areas in auditory cortex use a dominantly spectro-temporal based representation of the entire auditory scene, with both attended and ignored speech streams represented with almost equal fidelity. In contrast, we show that higher order auditory cortical areas represent an attended speech stream separately from, and with significantly higher fidelity than, unattended speech streams. Furthermore, the unattended background streams are represented as a single undivided background object rather than as distinct background objects.
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Auditory scene analysis
Auditory System
Selective auditory attention
Representation
Auditory imagery
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An important aspect of auditory scene analysis is sequential grouping of sounds that are similar to one another in preference to sounds that follow one another. This grouping problem is captured by stream segregation tasks with alternating distinct sounds. We examined human auditory cortex activity with low noise fMRI in a stream segregation experiment relying on timbre differences of alternating harmonic tones (organ-like and trumpet-like). We found that stream segregation performance in comparison to monitoring a non-separable control stream increased activation exclusively in left auditory cortex and particularly in posterior areas. Our results suggest that left auditory cortex is selectively involved in this complex sequential task although the available cue for sequential grouping was timbre, usually attributed to right hemisphere analysis.
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The flexible nature of auditory cortex, the complexity of real-world sounds, and limitations of the methods for neural measurement in humans have made it difficult to investigate auditory feature information processing in the human brain. Which precise features are encoded in auditory cortex and the roles they play in different cognitive tasks remained unclear. New methods for functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) provide solutions to these limitations. New acquisition sequences make less noise, improving the suitability of fMRI for auditory research. Real-time adaptive fMRI and multivariate pattern analysis methods are robust to individual differences in anatomy and exploit information in distributed neural networks. They allow assessment of which acoustic and abstracted features of simple and natural sounds are represented in human auditory regions during perception, and cognitive tasks such as change detection and imagery. The results indicate that auditory cortex is recruited for processes beyond analyzing simple feature information, playing an important role in maintaining sounds in short-term memory and encoding abstracted information during imagery. This research was supported by the Medical Research Council (UK) and The Brain and Mind Institute, University of Western Ontario.
Auditory perception
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The fundamental problem in audition is determining the mechanisms required by the brain to transform an unlabelled mixture of auditory stimuli into coherent perceptual representations. This process is called auditory-scene analysis. The perceptual representations that result from auditory-scene analysis are formed through a complex interaction of perceptual grouping, attention, categorization and decision-making. Despite a great deal of scientific energy devoted to understanding these aspects of hearing, we still do not understand (1) how sound perception arises from neural activity and (2) the causal relationship between neural activity and sound perception. Here, we review the role of the "ventral" auditory pathway in sound perception. We hypothesize that, in the early parts of the auditory cortex, neural activity reflects the auditory properties of a stimulus. However, in latter parts of the auditory cortex, neurons encode the sensory evidence that forms an auditory decision and are causally involved in the decision process. Finally, in the prefrontal cortex, which receives input from the auditory cortex, neural activity reflects the actual perceptual decision. Together, these studies indicate that the ventral pathway contains hierarchical circuits that are specialized for auditory perception and scene analysis.
Auditory imagery
Auditory scene analysis
Stimulus (psychology)
Auditory perception
Selective auditory attention
Auditory System
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Auditory perception
Auditory scene analysis
Pitch perception
Music Perception
Auditory System
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