Neurosciences in music

Music can be a powerful tool in the treatment of brain disorders and acquired injuries, helping patients recover language and motor skills. New music-based therapies can trigger neuroplasticity—fostering local connections and long-range pathways that compensate for impairments in damaged regions of the brain. The greatest benefits from therapy—cognitive, emotional and social—come from effortful engagement with music.

Full reference: Thompson, W.F., & Schlaug, G. (2015). The healing power of music. Scientific American: Mind, 26(2), 33-41.

Music has cognitive, psychosocial, behavioral and motor benefits for people with neurological disorders such as dementia, stroke, Parkinson’s disease and Autism Spectrum Disorder. Here we discuss seven properties or ‘capac- ities’ of music that interact with brain function and contribute to its therapeutic value. Specifically, in its various forms, music can be engaging, emotional, physical, personal, social and persuasive, and it promotes synchroniza- tion of movement. We propose the Therapeutic Music Capacities Model (TMCM), which links individual properties of music to therapeutic mechanisms, leading to cognitive, psychosocial, behavioral and motor benefits. We re- view evidence that these capacities have reliable benefits for people with dementia, stroke, PD and ASD when employed separately or in combination. The model accounts for the profound value that music affords human health and well-being and provides a framework for the development of non-pharmaceutical treatments for neu- rological disorders.

BACKGROUND. The generation and maintenance of tinnitus are assumed to be based on maladaptive functional cortical reorganization. Listening to modified music, which contains no energy in the range of the individual tinnitus frequency, can inhibit the corresponding neuronal activity in the auditory cortex. Music making has been shown to be a powerful stimulator for brain plasticity, inducing changes in multiple sensory systems. Using magnetoencephalographic (MEG) and behavioral measurements we evaluated the cortical plasticity effects of two months of (a) active listening to (unisensory) versus (b) learning to play (multisensory) tailor-made notched music in nonmusician tinnitus patients. Taking into account the fact that uni- and multisensory trainings induce different patterns of cortical plasticity we hypothesized that these two protocols will have different affects. RESULTS. Only the active listening (unisensory) group showed significant reduction of tinnitus related activity of ...

This paper lays out the foundation for new semiotics of music - that is in line with the most up-to-date research on neurophysiology of emotion. It shows how the traditional before the 20th century view of music as a language of emotions can indeed hold true in relation to perception of music.
This is the English translation of the original paper that was published in Spanish, in 2015.

Music changes the emotional state of the listener if it gets into resonance with his/her emotional state. The aim of this study was to investigate the dynamics of changes of psychophysiological parameters under listening to music depending on the severity of burnout. 75 healthy volunteers students aged 17-22 years old participated in the study. We used the CAM (cenesthesia, activity, mood), State Anxiety Inventory, and the Syndrome of Emotional Burnout test. EEG was registered over a period of 5 min during the rest state, 3 min during listening to the music (Beethoven, Fuer Elise), and 3 min of aftereffect. The resistance stage was detected in 29 students. The influence of music was more significant for the group, which did not develop the resistance stage. Listening to music decreased the level of anxiety and improved the level of cenesthesia. Generalized decrease in spectral power density indicated an overall decrease of activation of cognitive processes and weakening of the emotional background of mental activity in both groups. Depression of the theta2-, alpha1-, alpha2-subbands indicated a decrease in psychic tension. Listening to music led to changes in alpha- and beta-subbands. The level of activation of the general tone was lower than in the group with the resistance stage. It was characterized by the transition to the state of tranquility and actualization of memorial traces. Simultaneous desynchronization of theta1-, beta2 and alpha-subbands indicated a reduced level of nonspecific activation. Thus, the severity of burnout affected the traits of response to music.

The study of music cognition has been dominated by a largely disembodied conception of the mind. This so-called ‘cognitivist’ perspective treats mental activity in terms of abstract information-processing––where the world is represented in the mind via the computation of ‘sub-personal’ symbols; and where the mind-brain relationship is explained in terms of a collection of cognitive modules shaped by natural selection. Recent decades have seen an ecological-embodied paradigm emerge in cognitive science, as well as more plastic and interactive conceptions of the mind-brain and organism-environment relationships. These new perspectives offer a much broader understanding of meaning-making and the mind and are becoming increasingly influential in music cognition studies.

The orthodox approach to the mind and its origins is examined; and its influence on music cognition research is discussed. Alternative embodied, developmental, ecological and bio-cultural perspectives on cognition and the musical mind are considered. The ‘enactive’ approach to embodied cognition is then offered as a theoretical framework that better accommodates these broader and more nuanced ways of understanding musical meaning. To conclude, the relevance of the enactive approach is considered for music education, performance and practice.

Across the neuroscientific literature, a surprisingly consistent finding in studies of musical creativity is the involvement of motor regions. These regions—premotor cortex, the supplementary and pre-supplementary motor areas, and posterior inferior frontal gyrus—are implicated in higher-level capacities, such as motor sequencing and planning, rather than primary motor control, and are furthermore implicated in cognitive capacities not directly linked to overt motor behavior. Nevertheless, their consistent implication in studies of musical capacities—from perception and performance to composition and improvisation—prompts a reconsideration of the musical faculty as one that is not merely auditory, nor even primarily so, but rather one that is fundamentally auditory-motoric.

Background: Music is sometimes used as an adjunct to pain management. However, there is limited understanding of by what means music modulates pain perception and how the brain responds to nociceptive inputs while listening to music, because clinical practice typically involves the coexistence of multiple therapeutic interventions. To address this challenge, laboratory studies with experimental and control conditions are needed. Methods: In the present investigation, we delivered nociceptive laser stimuli on 30 participants under three conditions-participants were sitting in silence, listening to their preferred music, or listening to white noise. Differences among conditions were quantified by self-reports of pain intensity and unpleasantness, and brain activity sampled by electro-encephalography (EEG). Results: Compared with the noise and silence conditions, participants in the music condition reported lower ratings on pain unpleasantness, as reflected by reduced brain oscillations immediately prior to the nociceptive laser stimulus at frequencies of 4-15 Hz in EEG. In addition, participants showed smaller P2 amplitudes in laser-evoked potentials (LEPs) when they were listening to music or white noise in comparison to sitting in silence. These findings suggest that a general modulation effect of sounds on pain, with a specific reduction of pain unpleasantness induced by the positive emotional impact. Conclusion: Music may serve as a real-time regulator to modulate pain unpleasantness. Results are discussed in view of current understandings of music-induced analgesia.

People listen to music due to its ability to elicit strong emotions and pleasure. And experienced musicians and sound engineers, while mixing and mastering, consider the fact, that depending on signals level of certain frequencies music can elicit different emotions and affect on its strength. In this study we investigate an influence of low-frequency component in rock-music on music perception and emotional experience. 30 healthy volunteers (17 women and 13 men)-students aged 18 to 22 years with no prior musical education participated in this study. Four stimuli were presented: white noise (40 seconds), song of nightingales (60 sec), instrumental rock-composition (75 seconds) and the same rock-composition with reduced low-frequency level (60 Hz, 150Hz, 400Hz). In order to estimate spectral power EEG changes we compared every audio session sample with preceding rest state sample. During EEG registration volunteers were sitting in a comfortable chair in a darkened, soundproof room with closed eyes. After EEG registration participants were asked to estimate audio stimulus using valence and arousal emotional scales from "-5" to "+5". During listening to the sounds and music the most significant EEG changes were observed mainly in beta and gamma-bands, which related to emotional and cognitive processes. Listening to the white noise caused frontal activation in theta1-, theta2-, alpha3-, beta1-and beta2-subbands basically in right hemisphere and general activation in gamma-band. The right frontal activation could be related to a negative emotional response to a stimulus. In contrast, there was increase of SP in theta1-and gamma-in left hemisphere during listening to the song of birds, which related to positive emotional response and relaxation. There was an increase of SP in beta2-subband in left temporal, parietal, occipital and in right frontal lobe, and general activation in gamma-band during listening to the rock-composition with normal frequency range. Whereas there was increase of SP in gamma-band only in left posterior areas and in right frontal area, and in alpha3-and beta2-bands in occipital and right frontal lobes during listening to the rock-composition with reduced low-frequency signal level. The less activation in gamma-band during listening to the second rock-composition could be related to the lower level of emotional activation. The right frontal activation in alpha3-and beta2-subbands may also indicate on emotional processes. However, we don't exclude a possibility that changes in beta-and gamma-activity are related to such cognitive procesess as music component processing and memory.

There is a strong interaction between multisensory processing and the neuroplasticity of the human brain. On one hand, recent research demonstrates that experience and training in various domains modifies how information from the different senses is integrated; and, on the other hand multisensory training paradigms seem to be particularly effective in driving functional and structural plasticity. Multisensory training affects early sensory processing within separate sensory domains, as well as the functional and structural connectivity between uni- and multisensory brain regions. In this review, we discuss the evidence for interactions of multisensory processes and brain plasticity and give an outlook on promising clinical applications and open questions.

The prevalence of adolescents' mental disorders has become a critical social issue that needs to be addressed. More effective approaches, including music intervention, have been developed, but few kinds of research have explored the potential function of listening to pop music to improve the mental state of adolescents. This paper explores whether the use of scientifically proven pop music can help prevent anxiety and depression. Through the analysis of previous studies, existing music resources and experiments, it is proved that the scientific use of pop music as a self-help method beneficial to mental health can effectively prevent anxiety and depression in high school students. Based on the previous research, the author established the selection criteria for selecting pop music and verified that the music selected by the selection criteria was helpful to reduce the anxiety and depression level of high school students through experiments and later data analysis.

Background: Music is sometimes used as an adjunct to pain management. However, there is limited understanding of by what means music modulates pain perception and how the brain responds to nociceptive inputs while listening to music, because clinical practice typically involves the coexistence of multiple therapeutic interventions. To address this challenge, laboratory studies with experimental and control conditions are needed. Methods: In the present investigation, we delivered nociceptive laser stimuli on 30 parti-10 cipants under three conditions-participants were sitting in silence, listening to their preferred music, or listening to white noise. Differences among conditions were quantified by self-reports of pain intensity and unpleasantness, and brain activity sampled by electro-encephalography (EEG). Results: Compared with the noise and silence conditions, participants in the music condition 15 reported lower ratings on pain unpleasantness, as reflected by reduced brain oscillations immediately prior to the nociceptive laser stimulus at frequencies of 4-15 Hz in EEG. In addition, participants showed smaller P2 amplitudes in laser-evoked potentials (LEPs) when they were listening to music or white noise in comparison to sitting in silence. These findings suggest that a general modulation effect of sounds on pain, with a specific reduction of pain 20 unpleasantness induced by the positive emotional impact. Conclusion: Music may serve as a real-time regulator to modulate pain unpleasantness. Results are discussed in view of current understandings of music-induced analgesia. Music Reduces Pain Unpleasantness: Evidence from an EEG Study Background: Music is sometimes used as an adjunct to pain management. However, there is limited understanding of by what means music modulates pain perception and how the brain responds to nociceptive inputs while listening to music, because clinical practice typically involves the coexistence of multiple therapeutic interventions. To address this challenge, laboratory studies with experimental and control conditions are needed.

This study aimed to assess the effect of musical training in statistical learning of tone sequences using Magnetoencephalography (MEG). Specifically, MEG recordings were used to investigate the neural and functional correlates of the pre-attentive ability for detection of deviance, from a statistically learned tone sequence. The effect of long-term musical training in this ability is investigated by means of comparison of MMN in musicians to non-musicians. Both groups (musicians and non-musicians) showed a mismatch negativity (MMN) response to the deviants and this response did not differ amongst them neither in amplitude nor in latency. Another interesting finding of this study is that both groups revealed a significant difference between the standards and the deviants in the response of P50 and this difference was significantly larger in the group of musicians. The increase of this difference in the group of musicians underlies that intensive, specialized and long term exercise can enhance the ability of the auditory cortex to discriminate new auditory events from previously learned ones according to transitional probabilities. A behavioral discrimination task between the standard and the deviant sequences followed the MEG measurement. The behavioral results indicated that the detection of deviance was not explicitly learned by either group, probably due to the lack of attentional resources. These findings provide valuable insights on the functional architecture of statistical learning.

While absolute pitch (AP)—the ability to name musical pitches globally and without reference—is rare in expert musicians, anecdotal evidence suggests that some musicians may better identify pitches played on their primary instrument than pitches played on other instruments. We call this phenomenon “instrument-specific absolute pitch” (ISAP). In this paper we present a theory of ISAP. Specifically, we offer the hypothesis that some expert musicians without global AP may be able to more accurately identify pitches played on their primary instrument(s), and we propose timbral cues and articulatory motor imagery as two underlying mechanisms. Depending on whether informative timbral cues arise from performer- or instrument-specific idiosyncrasies or from timbre-facilitated tonotopic representations, we predict that performance may be enhanced for notes played by oneself, notes played on one’s own personal instrument, and/or notes played on any exemplar of one’s own instrument type. Sound...

For a number of reasons, this paper is quite special: it will not follow a traditional structure and it will – uncommonly – be strongly based on personal experiments, perceptions and visions. Yet it will try to address some fundamental elements which I think are to be taken into account if we are going to pursue the digital music dream Max Mathews, Jean-Claude Risset and John Chowning had back at Bell Labs in the 1960s.

The ability to generate complex hierarchical structures is a crucial component of human cognition which can be expressed in the musical domain in the form of hierarchical melodic relations. The neural underpinnings of this ability have been investigated by comparing the perception of well-formed melodies with unexpected sequences of tones. However, these contrasts do not target specifically the representation of rules generating hierarchical structure. Here, we present a novel paradigm in which identical melodic sequences are generated in four steps, according to three different rules: The Recursive rule, generating new hierarchical levels at each step; The Iterative rule, adding tones within a fixed hierarchical level without generating new levels; and a control rule that simply repeats the third step. Using fMRI, we compared brain activity across these rules when participants are imagining the fourth step after listening to the third (generation phase), and when participants liste...

The current study used function Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to examine the neural activity of an expert dancer with 35 years of breakdancing experience, during kinesthetic motor imagery (KMI) of dance accompanied by highly familiar and unfamiliar music. The goal of this study was to examine the effect of musical familiarity on neural activity underlying KMI within a highly experienced dancer. In order to investigate this in both primary sensory and motor planning cortical areas, we examined the effects of music familiarity on the primary auditory cortex (Heschl’s gyrus; HG) and the supplementary motor area (SMA). Our findings reveal reduced HG activity and greater SMA activity during imagined dance to familiar music compared to unfamiliar music. We propose that one’s internal representations of dance moves are influenced by auditory stimuli, and may be specific to a dance style and the music accompanying it.

Auditory prediction error responses elicited by surprising sounds can be reliably recorded with musical stimuli that are more complex and realistic than those typically employed in EEG or MEG oddball paradigms. However, these responses are reduced as the predictive uncertainty of the stimuli increases. In this study, we investigate whether this effect is modulated by musical expertise. Magnetic mismatch negativity (MMNm) responses were recorded from 26 musicians and 24 non-musicians while they listened to low-and high-uncertainty melodic sequences in a musical multi-feature paradigm that included pitch, slide, intensity and timbre deviants. When compared to non-musicians, musically trained participants had significantly larger pitch and slide MMNm responses. However, both groups showed comparable reductions in pitch and slide MMNm amplitudes in the high-uncertainty condition compared with the low-uncertainty condition. In a separate, behavioural deviance detection experiment, musicians were more accurate and confident about their responses than non-musicians, but deviance detection in both groups was similarly affected by the uncertainty of the melodies. In both experiments, the interaction between uncertainty and expertise was not significant, suggesting that the effect is comparable in both groups. Consequently, our results replicate the modulatory effect of predictive uncertainty on prediction error; show that it is present across different types of listeners ; and suggest that expertise-related and stimulus-driven modulations of predictive precision are dissociable and independent. K E Y W O R D S expertise, mismatch negativity, music, precision

While absolute pitch (AP)-the ability to name musical pitches globally and without reference-is rare in expert musicians, anecdotal evidence suggests that some musicians may better identify pitches played on their primary instrument than pitches played on other instruments. We call this phenomenon "instrument-specific absolute pitch" (ISAP). In this paper we present a theory of ISAP. Specifically, we offer the hypothesis that some expert musicians without global AP may be able to more accurately identify pitches played on their primary instrument(s), and we propose timbral cues and articulatory motor imagery as two underlying mechanisms. Depending on whether informative timbral cues arise from performer-or instrument-specific idiosyncrasies or from timbre-facilitated tonotopic representations, we predict that performance may be enhanced for notes played by oneself, notes played on one's own personal instrument, and/or notes played on any exemplar of one's own instrument type. Sounds of one's primary instrument may moreover activate kinesthetic memory and motor imagery, aiding pitch identification. In order to demonstrate how our theory can be tested, we report the methodology and analysis of two exemplary experiments conducted on two case-study participants who are professional oboists. The aim of the first experiment was to determine whether the oboists demonstrated ISAP ability, while the purpose of the second experiment was to provide a preliminary investigation of the underlying mechanisms. The results of the first experiment revealed that only one of the two oboists showed an advantage for identifying oboe tones over piano tones. For this oboist demonstrating ISAP, the second experiment demonstrated that pitch-naming accuracy decreased and variance around the correct pitch value increased as an effect of transposition and motor interference, but not of instrument or performer. These preliminary data suggest that some musicians possess ISAP while others do not. Timbral cues and motor imagery may both play roles in the acquisition of this ability. Based on our case study findings, we provide methodological considerations and recommendations for future empirical testing of our theory of ISAP.

Music is commonly used to facilitate or support movement, and increasingly used in movement rehabilitation. Additionally, there is some evidence to suggest that music imagery, which is reported to lead to brain signatures similar to music perception, may also assist movement. However, it is not yet known whether either imagined or musical cueing changes the way in which the motor system of the human brain is activated during simple movements. Here, functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to compare neural activity during wrist flexions performed to either heard or imagined music with self-pacing of the same movement without any cueing. Focusing specifically on the motor network of the brain, analyses were performed within a mask of BA4, BA6, the basal ganglia (putamen, caudate, and pallidum), the motor nuclei of the thalamus, and the whole cerebellum. Results revealed that moving to music compared with self-paced movement resulted in significantly increased activation in left cerebellum VI. Moving to imagined music led to significantly more activation in pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA) and right globus pallidus, relative to self-paced movement. When the music and imagery cueing conditions were contrasted directly, movements in the music condition showed significantly more activity in left hemisphere cerebellum VII and right hemisphere and vermis of cerebellum IX, while the imagery condition revealed more significant activity in pre-SMA. These results suggest that cueing movement with actual or imagined music impacts upon engagement of motor network regions during the movement, and suggest that heard and imagined cues can modulate movement in subtly different ways. These results may have implications for the applicability of auditory cueing in movement rehabilitation for different patient populations.