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Cognitive Neuroscience > Music and the brain > Flashcards

Music and the brain Flashcards

1
Q

What are properties of music?

A
  • universal: all cultures ever described have some form of music
  • Unique: you don’t need to be human to sing: birds
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2
Q

What does it mean that music is context specific for birds?

A
  • Neural and hormonal change. Only male birds sing to attract a mate or defend territory
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3
Q

What are some theories for what the function of music is?

A
  • Derived from a system for attracting mates (Darwin, 1871)
  • Social cohesion (bringing people together) leading to survival benefits (Huron, 2001)
  • precursor for language (Mithen, 2005)
  • Evolutionary by product of the adaptation for human language
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4
Q

What does the outer ear (pinnae and ear canal) do?

A

Amplifies certain frequencies, important for locating sounds

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5
Q

What does the middle ear (malleus, incus, stapes) do?

A

Converts airborne vibrations to liquid borne vibrations

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6
Q

What does the inner ear (including the cochlea) do?

A

Converts liquid borne vibrations to neural impulses

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7
Q

What does the auditory nerve do?

A

Carry the information from the ear to the CNS

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8
Q

How many synapses from the ear to the cortex?

A

4-5

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9
Q

Where does the medial geniculate nucleus project to?

A

The primary auditory cortex (also called ‘core’)

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10
Q

What is the core auditory area surrounded by?

A

the secondary auditory cortex

  • including the belt (primary auditory cortex)
  • parabelt (secondary auditory cortex)
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11
Q

In the pathway where does information go?

A

It ascends in descends

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12
Q

What type of organisation do the auditory nerve and auditory cortex have?

A

Tonotopic organisation (maps certain frequencies to certain parts of the cortex

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13
Q

What gyrus is the primary auditory cortex?

A

Heschl’s gyrus

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14
Q

what is the secondary auditory cortex made up of?

A

Planum polar and planum temporale

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15
Q

What region is sensitive to the spatial properties of sound?

A

The right auditory cortex

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16
Q

Why is music the perfect stimulus to study different cognitive processes?

A

Because it engages many brain functions such as emotion, memory, learning and plasticity, attention and motor control

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17
Q

What is the primary auditory cortex important for?

A

Auditory perceptions and sound analysis

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18
Q

What are the association cortices?

A

Parietal areas and parabout regions

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19
Q

What are the prefrontal cortices important for?

A
  • Expectancy generation, violation and satisfaction

- generates emotional response

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20
Q

What are motor cortices important for in music?

A

Playing an instrument or moving to the beat

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21
Q

What is the cerebellum important for in music?

A
  • Playing an instrument

- generates emotional response

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22
Q

What are the sensory cortices important for in music

A

Sensory feedback from playing an instrument

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23
Q

What is visual perception important for in music?

A

reading music and watching a performance

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24
Q

What generates emotional reactions to music?

A

The prefrontal cortex and cerebellum

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25
Q

What are the subcortical regions of music and what are they important for?

A
  • Amygdala: emotional response to music
  • Nucleus accumbens: part of the reward system: giving us pleasure from music
  • Hippocampus: memory of music
  • brainstem
26
Q

What does the brain organise pitch, rhythm, timbre, tempo, contour, loudness and spatial location into?

A

Meter, harmony and melody

27
Q

Which scale is present in every culture?

A

The pentatonic scale

28
Q

When does hearing work?

A

4-6 months before birth

29
Q

According to McDermott what do infants have a natural preference for?

A

Consonance

30
Q

According to Trehub et al what do infants easily notice changes to?

A

Countour

31
Q

What did the study by Perani et al in 2011 show when an fMRI was applied to 1 to 3 day old new-borns while they heard excerpts of Western tonal music and altered versions of the same excerpts?

A
  • Western music: right hemispheric activations in primary and higher order auditory cortex
  • Atonal music: activations emerged in left inferior frontal cortex and limbic structures
  • shows a hemispheric specialisation in processing of music
  • neural architecture underlying music processing in new-borns is sensitive to changes in the tonal key
32
Q

How does musical development work from new-born to 12 years?

A
  • New-born: perceive and remember pitch sequences, perceive beat, sensitivity to contour, preference for consonance
  • 5,6 yrs: respond to tonal more than atonal music
  • 7 yrs: sensitive to the rules of harmony
  • 10 yrs: understand finer aspects of key structure
  • 12 yrs: develop tastes and recognition of styles
33
Q

What is the Mozart effect?

A

refers to claims that people perform better on tests of spatial abilities after listening to music composed by Mozart

34
Q

What did Thomson Forde et al find out about the Mozart effect?

A

That it is an artefact of arousal and mood

35
Q

What is congenital amusia?

A
  • A lifelong disorder characterised by a difficulty in perceiving or making sense of music
  • need there to be a large difference in tone (almost an octave) in order to be able to perceive it
36
Q

Do amusia’s have normal rhythm perception?

A

yes

37
Q

Are amusiacs better at detecting differences in pitch tones when they are rising or falling?

A

Rising

38
Q

What is a pitch memory problem test?

A
  • Tone span: how many tones can you remember

- amusiacs perform worse than controls

39
Q

Do amusiacs have a problem telling if a melody is rising or falling?

A

Yes they can do

40
Q

Do amusics have difficulty with speech?

A

Yes but only with subtle changes

41
Q

What structural feature in the brain do amusics have?

A
  • thinner white matter density between the right frontal and temporal lobes
  • increases in grey matter in auditory cortex
  • may have compromised the development of right fronto-temporal pathway
42
Q

What is the Arcuate fasciculus (AF) pathway?

A

the pathway that links the superior temporal gyrus with the inferior frontal gyrus

43
Q

Why can auditory information not be transmitted the normal way in amusics?

A

Because the arcuate fasciculus is impaired

44
Q

Which ECH component is the lack of responsiveness to semitone changes that violate musical keys seen in?

A

The P600 component

45
Q

Amusics can track quarter tone pitch differences. Where do they show a brain response?

A

N200: early right-lateralised negative brain response

- But they are unaware!

46
Q

What is the shared syntactic integration resource hypothesis (SSIRH)?

A

Syntax in language and music share a common set of circuits instantiated in frontal brian regions

47
Q

According to a study by Patel et al what do we see if we compare violations in language and violations in music?

A

syntactic overlap between music and language:

  • The woman paid the baker and take the bread home- P 600 (like music)
  • The woman paid the baker and took the zebra home - N 400
  • The response between music and language are highly similar in the vicinity of 600 ms after the onset of the incongruity
48
Q

What is the emotional prosody and protolanguage hypothesis?

A

Music and language have a common origin - overlapping functions and shared circuitry

49
Q

What was found when 12 amusics made judgements about emotional expressions of spoken phrases?

A
  • amusics were significantly impaired in all emotions
  • so music and language share mechanisms that trigger emotional resposnes
  • there is a common evolutionary link between language and music
50
Q

What have Blood and Zatorre shown about music and emotion?

A
  • music can elicit both psychological (mood) and physiological changes - the chills after effect
  • music induced emotion: the chills effect has been shown to recruit reward motivational circuit: basal forebrain, midbrain, orbitofrontal regions and deactivation in amygdala
51
Q

What has the decrease in amygdala to do with the chill effect shown to be?

A

The anticipation of the chill rather than the chill itself

52
Q

What are the deep and ancient areas associated with chills?

A

Nucleus accumbens, orbitofrontal cortex and ventral tegmental area

53
Q

What does beat have an important link to in every culture?

A

Movement

54
Q

What helps people with Parkinson’s disease to walk?

A

Beat

55
Q

What brain structures keep the beat?

A

Motor structures

  • bilateral superior temporal gyrus areas activated when keeping a regular beat
  • dorsal motor areas activated when moving fingers to tap beat
  • basal ganglia (part of motor circuit) important in time intervals, controlling sequences of movement
56
Q

What is vocal learning?

A

learning to produce and imitate complex sound patterns based on what you hear - arbitrary sound sequence mapping. Important for keeping the beat

57
Q

Why do we move to the beat?

A

It’s the basal ganglia’s evolutionary modification to beat perception
- as the basal ganglia is involved in motor control

58
Q

With musical training what do we see an overlap of?

A

Auditory and motor systems which interact both during perception and production

59
Q

When comparing musicians to non-musicians in a passive (music) listening task what did Ohinishi et al find?

A

That musicians had a lateral left prefrontal cortex

60
Q

What are the differences in terms of brain areas between musicians and non-musicians?

A
  • differences are in the planum temporale and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (especially on the left side)
  • differences are in or near speech production and comprehension regions
  • left lateralisation for music
  • left posterior temporal gyrus (in or near Wernicke’s)
  • left lateral frontal cortex (in or near Broca’s)

Cognitive Neuroscience (9 decks)

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