Effect of pattern recurrence on neural processing of musical beat

Details

Supervisors

Nozaradan, Sylvie ; Crevecoeur, Frédéric

Faculty

Ecole polytechnique de Louvain

Degree label

Master [120] : ingénieur civil biomédical, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

Humans naturally perceive and spontaneously synchronize with one or more levels of periodic pulses (referred to as a meter) when listening to musical rhythm, even when the sensory input does not provide clear periodic cues to their temporal location. Insights are provided to better understand this perceptual phenomenon, which appears to be a universal human experience. To conduct scientific studies on this subject, it is essential to observe and measure this phenomenon. However, perceptual phenomena cannot be measured directly. Three different approaches will be examined in order to measure the effects of meter perception on the brain and behavior. Then, an experimental study was conducted with musicians and non-musicians to gain a deeper understanding of meter perception. Rhythmic inputs contain different metric cues or accents in various time ranges, which influence both cortical and behavioral responses to rhythm. We discovered that degrading cues in a specific time range (above 2000 ms) affected the prior-context in the cortical responses of participants, as recorded with an electroencephalogram. Here, prior-context refers to the short-term exposure to previous testing blocks. The tests were divided into four conditions, each with varying levels of degradation. Participants appeared to use information from previous testing blocks to improve their results, though there were differences in the prior-context information provided by different conditions. In line with previous studies, nehavioral results confirmed differences between non-musicians and musicians when asked to tap to their perceived beat, with musicians significantly outperforming non-musicians.