Journal article
Infants show enhanced neural responses to musical meter frequencies beyond low-level features
Developmental Science, Vol.26(5), pp.1-15
2023
PMID: 36415027
Abstract
Music listening often entails spontaneous perception and body movement to a periodic pulse-like meter. There is increasing evidence that this cross-cultural ability relates to neural processes that selectively enhance metric periodicities, even when these periodicities are not prominent in the acoustic stimulus. However, whether these neural processes emerge early in development remains largely unknown. Here, we recorded the electroencephalogram (EEG) of 20 healthy 5- to 6-month-old infants, while they were exposed to two rhythms known to induce perception of meter consistently across Western adults. One rhythm contained prominent acoustic periodicities corresponding to the meter, whereas the other rhythm did not. Infants showed significantly enhanced representations of meter periodicities in their EEG responses to both rhythms. This effect is unlikely to reflect the tracking of salient acoustic features in the stimulus, as it was observed irrespective of the prominence of meter periodicities in the audio signals. Moreover, as previously observed in adults, the neural enhancement of meter was greater when the rhythm was delivered by low-pitched sounds. Together, these findings indicate that the endogenous enhancement of metric periodicities beyond low-level acoustic features is a neural property that is already present soon after birth. These high-level neural processes could set the stage for internal representations of musical meter that are critical for human movement coordination during rhythmic musical behavior.
Details
- Title
- Infants show enhanced neural responses to musical meter frequencies beyond low-level features
- Authors
- Tomas Lenc (Corresponding Author) - UCLouvainVarghese Peter (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Health and Behavioural Sciences - LegacyCaitlin Hooper (Author) - Western Sydney UniversityPeter Erik Keller (Author) - Western Sydney UniversityDenis Burnham (Author) - Western Sydney UniversitySylvie Nozaradan (Author) - UCLouvain
- Publication details
- Developmental Science, Vol.26(5), pp.1-15
- Publisher
- Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
- Date published
- 2023
- DOI
- 10.1111/desc.13353
- ISSN
- 1467-7687
- PMID
- 36415027
- Copyright note
- © 2022 The Authors. Developmental Science published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
- Grant note
- H2020 European Research Council (801872)
- Organisation Unit
- School of Health - Psychology; School of Health and Behavioural Sciences - Legacy
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99690998902621
- Output Type
- Journal article
Metrics
16 File views/ downloads
52 Record Views
InCites Highlights
These are selected metrics from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool, related to this output
- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- International collaboration
- Web Of Science research areas
- Psychology, Developmental
- Psychology, Experimental