Speech-on-speech perception remains challenging for some cochlear implant (CI) users. In normal-h... more Speech-on-speech perception remains challenging for some cochlear implant (CI) users. In normal-hearing listeners, differences in voice characteristics such as F0 and vocal-tract length (VTL), which indicate age, sex, and size of the speaker, are known to support the segregation of competing voices. However, previous research indicated that postlingual adult CI users tend not to derive any perceptual benefit from voice differences, whereas prelingually deafened child CI users do. The current study tested speech-on-speech perception in adult CI users. In a coordinate response measure (CRM) paradigm, participants identified a number and color in a target speech stream competing with a gibberish speech masker. The masker voice was either identical to the female target voice, or the F0 and VTL were altered to create either an ambiguous fe/male voice, or a clearly male voice. The target-to-masker ratio (TMR) was also systematically manipulated to take the values: 0, + 6 and + 12 dB. Whil...
Perceiving acoustic cues that convey music emotion is challenging for cochlear implant (CI) users... more Perceiving acoustic cues that convey music emotion is challenging for cochlear implant (CI) users. Emotional arousal (stimulating/relaxing) can be conveyed by temporal cues such as tempo, while emotional valence (positive/negative) can be conveyed by spectral information salient to pitch and harmony. It is however unclear the extent to which other temporal and spectral features convey emotional arousal and valence in music, respectively. In 23 normal-hearing participants, we varied the quality of temporal and spectral content using vocoders during a music emotion categorization task—musical excerpts conveyed joy (high arousal high valence), fear (high arousal low valence), serenity (low arousal high valence), and sorrow (low arousal low valence). Vocoder carriers (sinewave/noise) primarily modulated temporal information, and filter orders (low/high) primarily modulated spectral information. Improvement of temporal- (using sinewave carriers) and spectral content (using high filter or...
Perceiving “cocktail party” speech, or speech-on-speech (SoS), requires perceptual mechanisms suc... more Perceiving “cocktail party” speech, or speech-on-speech (SoS), requires perceptual mechanisms such as segregating target from masking speech using voice cues, and on cognitive mechanisms such as selective attention and inhibition. Both aging and musical expertise have been shown to affect these mechanisms. Voice cues that help distinguish different speakers include mean fundamental frequency (F0), related to voice pitch, and the vocal-tract length (VTL), related to speaker size. Some studies reported older adults’ decreased sensitivity to F0 differences, possibly affecting their ability to discriminate speakers. Furthermore, age-related cognitive changes may lead to difficulties in attention direction and inhibition. Compared to non-musicians, musicians are reported to show enhanced processing of acoustic features such as F0, as well as enhanced cognitive abilities such as auditory attention skills and working memory. While this intuitively could lead to a musician advantage for SoS...
The perception of speech prosody in a second language (L2) remains challenging even for proficien... more The perception of speech prosody in a second language (L2) remains challenging even for proficient L2 users. Eye-tracking evidence indicates that Dutch listeners show difficulty in the processing of pitch accents that signal a contrast (i.e., contrastive focus) in English, whereas native English listeners use this cue in perception to anticipate upcoming information [Ge et al., Appl. Psycholinguist. 42, 1057–1088 (2021)]. Prosody perception abilities in foreign languages have been associated with individual differences in musical abilities [Jansen et al., Speech Prosody, 713–717 (2022)]. We investigated whether musical abilities influenced the processing of prosodic cues by 45 Dutch adult L2 English users, using a visual-world eye-tracking paradigm. Participants listened to sentences with pitch accent cues to contrastive focus on different words, while viewing pictures showing objects and characters mentioned. We investigated to what extent participants showed anticipatory fixations...
Considerable debate surrounds syntactic processing similarities in language and music. Yet few st... more Considerable debate surrounds syntactic processing similarities in language and music. Yet few studies have investigated how syntax interacts with meter considering that metrical regularity varies across domains. Furthermore, there are reports on individual differences in syntactic and metrical structure processing in music and language. Thus, a direct comparison of individual variation in syntax and meter processing across domains is warranted. In a behavioral (Experiment 1) and EEG study (Experiment 2), participants engaged in syntactic processing tasks with sentence- and melody stimuli that were more or less metrically regular, and followed a preferred or non-preferred (but correct) syntactic structure. We further employed a range of cognitive diagnostic tests, parametrically indexed verbal- and musical abilities using a principal component analysis, and correlated cognitive factors with the behavioral and ERP results (Experiment 3). Based on previous results in the language doma...
While previous research investigating music emotion perception of cochlear implant (CI) users obs... more While previous research investigating music emotion perception of cochlear implant (CI) users observed that temporal cues informing tempo largely convey emotional arousal (relaxing/stimulating), it remains unclear how other properties of the temporal content may contribute to the transmission of arousal features. Moreover, while detailed spectral information related to pitch and harmony in music — often not well perceived by CI users— reportedly conveys emotional valence (positive, negative), it remains unclear how the quality of spectral content contributes to valence perception. Therefore, the current study used vocoders to vary temporal and spectral content of music and tested music emotion categorization (joy, fear, serenity, sadness) in 23 normal-hearing participants. Vocoders were varied with two carriers (sinewave or noise; primarily modulating temporal information), and two filter orders (low or high; primarily modulating spectral information). Results indicated that emotion...
Humans can easily extract the rhythm of a complex sound, like music, and move to its regular beat... more Humans can easily extract the rhythm of a complex sound, like music, and move to its regular beat, for example in dance. These abilities are modulated by musical training and vary significantly in untrained individuals. The causes of this variability are multidimensional and typically hard to grasp with single tasks. To date we lack a comprehensive model capturing the rhythmic fingerprints of both musicians and non-musicians. Here we harnessed machine learning to extract a parsimonious model of rhythmic abilities, based on the behavioral testing (with perceptual and motor tasks) of individuals with and without formal musical training (n= 79). We demonstrate that the variability of rhythmic abilities, and their link with formal and informal music experience, can be successfully captured by profiles including a minimal set of behavioral measures. These profiles can shed light on individual variability in healthy and clinical populations, and provide guidelines for personalizing rhythm...
BACKGROUND Postoperative patients who previously engaged in the live musical intervention Meaning... more BACKGROUND Postoperative patients who previously engaged in the live musical intervention Meaningful Music in Healthcare (MiMiC) reported significantly reduced perception of pain than patients without the intervention. This encouraging finding indicates a potential for postsurgical musical interventions to have a place in standard care as therapeutic pain relief. However, live music is logistically complex in hospital settings, and previous studies have reported the more cost-effective recorded music to serve a similar pain-reducing function in post-surgical patients. Moreover, little is known about the potential underlying physiological mechanisms that may be responsible for the reduced pain perceived by patients after live music intervention. OBJECTIVE The primary objective is to see whether a live music intervention can significantly lower perceived postoperative pain compared to recorded music intervention and do-nothing control. The secondary objective is to explore neuroinflam...
Speech-on-speech (SoS) perception relies on perceptual mechanisms, such as discriminating mean fu... more Speech-on-speech (SoS) perception relies on perceptual mechanisms, such as discriminating mean fundamental frequency (F0) and vocal-tract length (VTL), and cognitive mechanisms, such as selective attention and working memory. Older adults may be less sensitive to F0 differences, possibly affecting their ability to perceive different speakers. Age-related cognitive changes may lead to difficulties in attention direction and inhibition. Compared to non-musicians, musicians are reported to possess enhanced processing of acoustic features such as F0, as well as enhanced cognitive abilities such as auditory attention skills and working memory . While this intuitively could lead to a musician advantage for SoS perception, reports of musicians outperforming non-musicians on SoS tasks are inconsistent across both younger and older adults. Differences in SoS paradigms across the literature have made it difficult to directly compare musicianship advantages in SoS perception in younger and old...
During the normal course of aging, perception of speech-on-speech or “cocktail party” speech and ... more During the normal course of aging, perception of speech-on-speech or “cocktail party” speech and use of working memory (WM) abilities change. Musical training, which is a complex activity that integrates multiple sensory modalities and higher-order cognitive functions, reportedly benefits both WM performance and speech-on-speech perception in older adults. This mini-review explores the relationship between musical training, WM and speech-on-speech perception in older age (> 65 years) through the lens of the Ease of Language Understanding (ELU) model. Linking neural-oscillation literature associating speech-on-speech perception and WM with alpha-theta oscillatory activity, we propose that two stages of speech-on-speech processing in the ELU are underpinned by WM-related alpha-theta oscillatory activity, and that effects of musical training on speech-on-speech perception may be reflected in these frequency bands among older adults.
Native speakers of German and Turkish early and late learners of German were tested in one EEG an... more Native speakers of German and Turkish early and late learners of German were tested in one EEG and behavioral session using sentences in German. Syntactically ambiguous and non-ambiguous sentences were auditorily presented, after which participants' comprehension was verified by means of a visually presentation of the rephrase of the sentence they just listened to. Participants were instructed to answer as accurate and quick as possible to the visually presented verification questions following the auditorily presented material. Auditorily presented sentences had a rhythmically regular stress pattern (with an inter-stress interval of three syllables) or a rhythmically irregular one (with varying inter-stress intervals). This experiment investigated whether the processing of syntactic ambiguity could be facilitated by predictable rhythmic cues (as in the rhythmically regular stress pattern). Results indicated that native speakers of German make use of rhythmic regularity to facil...
The Shared Syntactic Integration Resource Hypothesis (SSIRH; Aniruddh D Patel, 2003) argued that ... more The Shared Syntactic Integration Resource Hypothesis (SSIRH; Aniruddh D Patel, 2003) argued that language and music processing share a common parser responsible for the integration of their elements into larger syntactic structures. Crucial to this hypothesis, Patel and colleagues (1998) reported similarities in the P600 mean amplitude, scalp distribution, and latency in response to syntactic violations in music and language. Subsequent behavioral studies reported an increased difficulty in language processing by means of lower accuracy rates and longer reaction times while judging syntactically violated sentences presented with simultaneous music syntactic violations (Fedorenko et al., 2009; Slevc et al., 2009). Subsequent ERP studies demonstrated a cross-domain interaction in detection-related syntactic processing, in both directions. These supporting findings consisted of modulated ERP amplitudes such as a reduced Left Anterior Negativity (LAN) in language when music syntax was i...
The Battery for the Assessment of Auditory Sensorimotor and Timing Abilities (BAASTA) is a new to... more The Battery for the Assessment of Auditory Sensorimotor and Timing Abilities (BAASTA) is a new tool for the systematic assessment of perceptual and sensorimotor timing skills. It spans a broad range of timing skills aimed at differentiating individual timing profiles. BAASTA consists of sensitive time perception and production tasks. Perceptual tasks include duration discrimination, anisochrony detection (with tones and music), and a version of the Beat Alignment Task. Perceptual thresholds for duration discrimination and anisochrony detection are estimated with a maximum likelihood procedure (MLP) algorithm. Production tasks use finger tapping and include unpaced and paced tapping (with tones and music), synchronization-continuation, and adaptive tapping to a sequence with a tempo change. BAASTA was tested in a proof-of-concept study with 20 non-musicians (Experiment 1). To validate the results of the MLP procedure, less widespread than standard staircase methods, three perceptual ...
Conclusion Neural correlates of music and action: An electrophysiological and behavioral study El... more Conclusion Neural correlates of music and action: An electrophysiological and behavioral study Eleanor Harding1, Daniela Sammler2, Alessandro D’Ausilio3, Katrin Cunitz2, Luciano Fadiga3, 4, & Stefan Koelsch5 1 Minerva Research Group "Neurocognition of Rhythm in Communication," Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany 2 Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany 3 Italian Institute of Technology, Genoa, Italy ; 4 University of Ferrara, DSBTA – Section of Human Physiology, Ferrara, Italy 5 Freie Universität Berlin, Cluster of Excellence “Languages of Emotion”, Berlin, Germany
Speech-on-speech perception remains challenging for some cochlear implant (CI) users. In normal-h... more Speech-on-speech perception remains challenging for some cochlear implant (CI) users. In normal-hearing listeners, differences in voice characteristics such as F0 and vocal-tract length (VTL), which indicate age, sex, and size of the speaker, are known to support the segregation of competing voices. However, previous research indicated that postlingual adult CI users tend not to derive any perceptual benefit from voice differences, whereas prelingually deafened child CI users do. The current study tested speech-on-speech perception in adult CI users. In a coordinate response measure (CRM) paradigm, participants identified a number and color in a target speech stream competing with a gibberish speech masker. The masker voice was either identical to the female target voice, or the F0 and VTL were altered to create either an ambiguous fe/male voice, or a clearly male voice. The target-to-masker ratio (TMR) was also systematically manipulated to take the values: 0, + 6 and + 12 dB. Whil...
Perceiving acoustic cues that convey music emotion is challenging for cochlear implant (CI) users... more Perceiving acoustic cues that convey music emotion is challenging for cochlear implant (CI) users. Emotional arousal (stimulating/relaxing) can be conveyed by temporal cues such as tempo, while emotional valence (positive/negative) can be conveyed by spectral information salient to pitch and harmony. It is however unclear the extent to which other temporal and spectral features convey emotional arousal and valence in music, respectively. In 23 normal-hearing participants, we varied the quality of temporal and spectral content using vocoders during a music emotion categorization task—musical excerpts conveyed joy (high arousal high valence), fear (high arousal low valence), serenity (low arousal high valence), and sorrow (low arousal low valence). Vocoder carriers (sinewave/noise) primarily modulated temporal information, and filter orders (low/high) primarily modulated spectral information. Improvement of temporal- (using sinewave carriers) and spectral content (using high filter or...
Perceiving “cocktail party” speech, or speech-on-speech (SoS), requires perceptual mechanisms suc... more Perceiving “cocktail party” speech, or speech-on-speech (SoS), requires perceptual mechanisms such as segregating target from masking speech using voice cues, and on cognitive mechanisms such as selective attention and inhibition. Both aging and musical expertise have been shown to affect these mechanisms. Voice cues that help distinguish different speakers include mean fundamental frequency (F0), related to voice pitch, and the vocal-tract length (VTL), related to speaker size. Some studies reported older adults’ decreased sensitivity to F0 differences, possibly affecting their ability to discriminate speakers. Furthermore, age-related cognitive changes may lead to difficulties in attention direction and inhibition. Compared to non-musicians, musicians are reported to show enhanced processing of acoustic features such as F0, as well as enhanced cognitive abilities such as auditory attention skills and working memory. While this intuitively could lead to a musician advantage for SoS...
The perception of speech prosody in a second language (L2) remains challenging even for proficien... more The perception of speech prosody in a second language (L2) remains challenging even for proficient L2 users. Eye-tracking evidence indicates that Dutch listeners show difficulty in the processing of pitch accents that signal a contrast (i.e., contrastive focus) in English, whereas native English listeners use this cue in perception to anticipate upcoming information [Ge et al., Appl. Psycholinguist. 42, 1057–1088 (2021)]. Prosody perception abilities in foreign languages have been associated with individual differences in musical abilities [Jansen et al., Speech Prosody, 713–717 (2022)]. We investigated whether musical abilities influenced the processing of prosodic cues by 45 Dutch adult L2 English users, using a visual-world eye-tracking paradigm. Participants listened to sentences with pitch accent cues to contrastive focus on different words, while viewing pictures showing objects and characters mentioned. We investigated to what extent participants showed anticipatory fixations...
Considerable debate surrounds syntactic processing similarities in language and music. Yet few st... more Considerable debate surrounds syntactic processing similarities in language and music. Yet few studies have investigated how syntax interacts with meter considering that metrical regularity varies across domains. Furthermore, there are reports on individual differences in syntactic and metrical structure processing in music and language. Thus, a direct comparison of individual variation in syntax and meter processing across domains is warranted. In a behavioral (Experiment 1) and EEG study (Experiment 2), participants engaged in syntactic processing tasks with sentence- and melody stimuli that were more or less metrically regular, and followed a preferred or non-preferred (but correct) syntactic structure. We further employed a range of cognitive diagnostic tests, parametrically indexed verbal- and musical abilities using a principal component analysis, and correlated cognitive factors with the behavioral and ERP results (Experiment 3). Based on previous results in the language doma...
While previous research investigating music emotion perception of cochlear implant (CI) users obs... more While previous research investigating music emotion perception of cochlear implant (CI) users observed that temporal cues informing tempo largely convey emotional arousal (relaxing/stimulating), it remains unclear how other properties of the temporal content may contribute to the transmission of arousal features. Moreover, while detailed spectral information related to pitch and harmony in music — often not well perceived by CI users— reportedly conveys emotional valence (positive, negative), it remains unclear how the quality of spectral content contributes to valence perception. Therefore, the current study used vocoders to vary temporal and spectral content of music and tested music emotion categorization (joy, fear, serenity, sadness) in 23 normal-hearing participants. Vocoders were varied with two carriers (sinewave or noise; primarily modulating temporal information), and two filter orders (low or high; primarily modulating spectral information). Results indicated that emotion...
Humans can easily extract the rhythm of a complex sound, like music, and move to its regular beat... more Humans can easily extract the rhythm of a complex sound, like music, and move to its regular beat, for example in dance. These abilities are modulated by musical training and vary significantly in untrained individuals. The causes of this variability are multidimensional and typically hard to grasp with single tasks. To date we lack a comprehensive model capturing the rhythmic fingerprints of both musicians and non-musicians. Here we harnessed machine learning to extract a parsimonious model of rhythmic abilities, based on the behavioral testing (with perceptual and motor tasks) of individuals with and without formal musical training (n= 79). We demonstrate that the variability of rhythmic abilities, and their link with formal and informal music experience, can be successfully captured by profiles including a minimal set of behavioral measures. These profiles can shed light on individual variability in healthy and clinical populations, and provide guidelines for personalizing rhythm...
BACKGROUND Postoperative patients who previously engaged in the live musical intervention Meaning... more BACKGROUND Postoperative patients who previously engaged in the live musical intervention Meaningful Music in Healthcare (MiMiC) reported significantly reduced perception of pain than patients without the intervention. This encouraging finding indicates a potential for postsurgical musical interventions to have a place in standard care as therapeutic pain relief. However, live music is logistically complex in hospital settings, and previous studies have reported the more cost-effective recorded music to serve a similar pain-reducing function in post-surgical patients. Moreover, little is known about the potential underlying physiological mechanisms that may be responsible for the reduced pain perceived by patients after live music intervention. OBJECTIVE The primary objective is to see whether a live music intervention can significantly lower perceived postoperative pain compared to recorded music intervention and do-nothing control. The secondary objective is to explore neuroinflam...
Speech-on-speech (SoS) perception relies on perceptual mechanisms, such as discriminating mean fu... more Speech-on-speech (SoS) perception relies on perceptual mechanisms, such as discriminating mean fundamental frequency (F0) and vocal-tract length (VTL), and cognitive mechanisms, such as selective attention and working memory. Older adults may be less sensitive to F0 differences, possibly affecting their ability to perceive different speakers. Age-related cognitive changes may lead to difficulties in attention direction and inhibition. Compared to non-musicians, musicians are reported to possess enhanced processing of acoustic features such as F0, as well as enhanced cognitive abilities such as auditory attention skills and working memory . While this intuitively could lead to a musician advantage for SoS perception, reports of musicians outperforming non-musicians on SoS tasks are inconsistent across both younger and older adults. Differences in SoS paradigms across the literature have made it difficult to directly compare musicianship advantages in SoS perception in younger and old...
During the normal course of aging, perception of speech-on-speech or “cocktail party” speech and ... more During the normal course of aging, perception of speech-on-speech or “cocktail party” speech and use of working memory (WM) abilities change. Musical training, which is a complex activity that integrates multiple sensory modalities and higher-order cognitive functions, reportedly benefits both WM performance and speech-on-speech perception in older adults. This mini-review explores the relationship between musical training, WM and speech-on-speech perception in older age (> 65 years) through the lens of the Ease of Language Understanding (ELU) model. Linking neural-oscillation literature associating speech-on-speech perception and WM with alpha-theta oscillatory activity, we propose that two stages of speech-on-speech processing in the ELU are underpinned by WM-related alpha-theta oscillatory activity, and that effects of musical training on speech-on-speech perception may be reflected in these frequency bands among older adults.
Native speakers of German and Turkish early and late learners of German were tested in one EEG an... more Native speakers of German and Turkish early and late learners of German were tested in one EEG and behavioral session using sentences in German. Syntactically ambiguous and non-ambiguous sentences were auditorily presented, after which participants' comprehension was verified by means of a visually presentation of the rephrase of the sentence they just listened to. Participants were instructed to answer as accurate and quick as possible to the visually presented verification questions following the auditorily presented material. Auditorily presented sentences had a rhythmically regular stress pattern (with an inter-stress interval of three syllables) or a rhythmically irregular one (with varying inter-stress intervals). This experiment investigated whether the processing of syntactic ambiguity could be facilitated by predictable rhythmic cues (as in the rhythmically regular stress pattern). Results indicated that native speakers of German make use of rhythmic regularity to facil...
The Shared Syntactic Integration Resource Hypothesis (SSIRH; Aniruddh D Patel, 2003) argued that ... more The Shared Syntactic Integration Resource Hypothesis (SSIRH; Aniruddh D Patel, 2003) argued that language and music processing share a common parser responsible for the integration of their elements into larger syntactic structures. Crucial to this hypothesis, Patel and colleagues (1998) reported similarities in the P600 mean amplitude, scalp distribution, and latency in response to syntactic violations in music and language. Subsequent behavioral studies reported an increased difficulty in language processing by means of lower accuracy rates and longer reaction times while judging syntactically violated sentences presented with simultaneous music syntactic violations (Fedorenko et al., 2009; Slevc et al., 2009). Subsequent ERP studies demonstrated a cross-domain interaction in detection-related syntactic processing, in both directions. These supporting findings consisted of modulated ERP amplitudes such as a reduced Left Anterior Negativity (LAN) in language when music syntax was i...
The Battery for the Assessment of Auditory Sensorimotor and Timing Abilities (BAASTA) is a new to... more The Battery for the Assessment of Auditory Sensorimotor and Timing Abilities (BAASTA) is a new tool for the systematic assessment of perceptual and sensorimotor timing skills. It spans a broad range of timing skills aimed at differentiating individual timing profiles. BAASTA consists of sensitive time perception and production tasks. Perceptual tasks include duration discrimination, anisochrony detection (with tones and music), and a version of the Beat Alignment Task. Perceptual thresholds for duration discrimination and anisochrony detection are estimated with a maximum likelihood procedure (MLP) algorithm. Production tasks use finger tapping and include unpaced and paced tapping (with tones and music), synchronization-continuation, and adaptive tapping to a sequence with a tempo change. BAASTA was tested in a proof-of-concept study with 20 non-musicians (Experiment 1). To validate the results of the MLP procedure, less widespread than standard staircase methods, three perceptual ...
Conclusion Neural correlates of music and action: An electrophysiological and behavioral study El... more Conclusion Neural correlates of music and action: An electrophysiological and behavioral study Eleanor Harding1, Daniela Sammler2, Alessandro D’Ausilio3, Katrin Cunitz2, Luciano Fadiga3, 4, & Stefan Koelsch5 1 Minerva Research Group "Neurocognition of Rhythm in Communication," Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany 2 Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany 3 Italian Institute of Technology, Genoa, Italy ; 4 University of Ferrara, DSBTA – Section of Human Physiology, Ferrara, Italy 5 Freie Universität Berlin, Cluster of Excellence “Languages of Emotion”, Berlin, Germany
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