Neuroscience and Music Perception

Very Early Cortical Auditory Responses to Speech in Humans

This study examines early cortical auditory responses to speech and clicks using EEG and MEG, finding a unique early peak in speech TRFs not present in click TRFs.

Decoding Individual Musical Pitches in Perception and Imagery using Evoked Theta and Beta Power in EEG

This study decodes individual imagined musical pitches from EEG oscillatory power during perception, imagery, and a random-pitch control condition, showing shared theta-beta signatures between perception and imagery.

Hierarchical neural integration of musical structure during expert performance

This study investigates how expert pianists integrate tonal structure across multiple timescales during performance using fMRI, finding that scrambling musical structure affects brain networks involved in motor and auditory processing.

Surprise gates two distinct mechanisms to support memorability in music

The paper investigates how musical memorability relates to neural responses to surprise and expectation, finding a U-shaped relationship between surprise and memory performance.

Bouncing back: Transient, but not long-lasting, effects of background disturbances on speech processing

This study investigates the time-course of speech processing disruptions caused by background disturbances, finding that effects are transient and do not lead to prolonged comprehension issues.

When Music Loses Its Pleasure: Hippocampal Cingulum White Matter as a Structural Mediator of Musical Reward Decline in Aging

This study identifies white matter integrity in the hippocampal cingulum and external capsule as predictors of declining musical reward sensitivity in older adults.

Infant cortical tracking of speech shows emerging spatial release from masking in the first year of life

The paper investigates whether infants can use spatial cues to improve speech perception in noise, finding that both infants and adults show spatial release from masking, though infants' effects are localized.

Motor signals modulate cortical but not subcortical processing of self-initiated sounds

The paper investigates how motor signals affect auditory processing of self-initiated sounds, finding that motor-induced suppression occurs in cortical signals but not in frequency following responses.

Mu suppression reveals auditory-motor predictions after short musical training

The paper shows that short musical training induces mu suppression during passive listening to learned melodies in non-musicians, indicating motor predictions in auditory perception.

Top-down influences on neural music processing: preference, enjoyment and familiarity influence neural tracking and brain rhythms differently

This study examines how music enjoyment and familiarity independently and interactively influence neural tracking and brain rhythms during music listening using EEG.

Parvalbumin and somatostatin interneurons support distinct computations during auditory scene analysis

The paper investigates how parvalbumin and somatostatin interneurons contribute to auditory scene analysis by examining their distinct roles in spatial processing and target-masker discrimination.

Supra second timing reflects oscillatory and aperiodic EEG dynamics

This study investigates supra-second timing using EEG, finding that domain-general neural activity, not specialized mechanisms, underlies timing accuracy in interval reproduction tasks.

Effect of tempo on newborns' neural processing of auditory rhythm: Emergence of sensitivity to metrical structure

The paper investigates how tempo and metrical structure influence neural processing of auditory rhythm in newborns and adults, finding that adults show stable sensitivity to metrical structure while newborns' responses are tempo-dependent.

Motor Resonance of Musical Emotion: A Machine Learning Approach to EEG Decoding During Expressive Music Performance

This paper uses EEG data from a professional pianist to classify emotional categories during musical performance using machine learning, finding that oscillatory brain activity can distinguish between different emotional states.

Human primary auditory cortex and insula encode perceptual decisions, not stimulus features

This study shows that early auditory brain regions encode decision-related signals rather than stimulus features during a social voice decision task with low-salience cues.

Noise statistics drive background- and channel-specific interference in auditory midbrain representations of speech

The paper investigates how background noise statistics affect speech encoding in the auditory midbrain of rabbits, finding that neural response variability depends on background spectrum and modulation statistics.

Context effects in pitch discrimination reflect response bias not sensory bias

The paper investigates contraction bias in pitch discrimination, finding that it reflects decision biases rather than sensory biases based on context.

Disruption of prefrontal cortex accelerates sensory anchoring but dissociates online recognition from implicit consolidation of sound sequences

This study investigates the role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in auditory learning, finding it accelerates implicit anchoring of predictable sound patterns but does not affect implicit consolidation.

Neural Tracking of Speech Envelope as an Index of Spatial Release from Masking

The paper investigates neural speech tracking using EEG to quantify spatial release from masking in normal-hearing listeners, finding that spatial separation enhances neural tracking and reflects behavioral improvements.

Modulating Neural Tracking of Speech in Infants

The paper shows that brief exposure to structured musical rhythms enhances cortical tracking of speech in bilingual infants, with effects varying by age, language, and frequency band.

Pitch selectivity in ferret auditory cortex

The paper investigates how ferret auditory cortex neurons represent pitch cues, finding specialized neurons that encode pitch from harmonic content, temporal periodicity, or both.

Perceptual training selectively strengthens top-down signaling to sensory cortex

This study shows that perceptual learning enhances top-down signaling from the orbitofrontal cortex to auditory cortex but not visual cortex.

From Variability to Synchrony: Non-linear Development of Auditory Neural Responses During the First Year of Life

This study tracks auditory neural development in infants using hdEEG, showing increased neural synchrony and reduced variability over the first year, with a nonlinear pattern of phase synchronization.

Distributional context reweights duration-related activity across timing-related regions

The paper shows distributional context affects duration-related BOLD responses in timing-related brain regions during a temporal bisection task.

Pupil- and gaze dynamics track emotion content in naturalistic speech

This study examines how pupil responses and eye movements track speech features and are influenced by emotional content in natural speech.

The frequency dependence of EEG-speech envelope tracking does not reflect the rates of speech units or pitch

The study shows that neural envelope tracking in EEG does not correlate with speech unit rates or pitch, revealing distinct frequency-dependent neural mechanisms.

Representations of spatial saliency in auditory cortex are selectively organized through temporal coordination

The paper shows that behaviorally relevant sound locations in mice organize auditory cortex activity through temporal coordination, not firing rate changes, during a reward-associated task.

Reward gates auditory pattern encoding in the primate globus pallidus

This study shows that reward enhances auditory pattern encoding in the primate globus pallidus, with responses persisting even after reward is removed.

Top-down attention modulates auditory sustained responses but not the neural processing advantage for vowels

The paper examines how sustained auditory attention modulates neural responses to vowels and noise, finding that attention affects early and late components of sustained negativity but not the neural advantage for vowels.

Speech Stream Tracking in 2D: Attention Differentially Enhances Acoustic and Phonemic Encoding Across Spatial Planes

The paper investigates how auditory attention differentially enhances acoustic and phonemic encoding in spatially separated sound streams, showing distinct mechanisms in azimuth versus elevation.