Neural Dynamics of Sensorimotor Synchronization
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1
Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar Ilan University, Israel
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2
The Hebrew University, Israel
Music processing is one of the most complex and demanding cognitive processes that the human mind can perform. Over the last decade, the neural basis of music processing has become an area of intense study due to the development of several imaging techniques such as fMRI, EEG and MEG. These techniques make it possible to characterize and localize brain activity while performing tasks that involve music perception. Understanding the neural mechanisms that underlie music perception should lead to a better understanding of the organization and synchronization of different regions in the human brain.
This study is aimed at characterizing the interactions between brain regions involved in the perception of timing in music. Specifically, we would like to examine how activity in specific brain regions changes when individuals detect a change in the musical meter of an auditory sequence and has to resynchronize their taps with the new pattern. Such process relies on our ability to coordinate perception and action and is referred to as Sensorimotor Synchronization (SMS).
Human brain imaging techniques are usually limited in their temporal or spatial resolution and thus restrict our ability to study the dynamics of fast processes that takes place in multiple brain regions simultaneously. We used Magnetoencephalogram (MEG) recordings in order to measure the neuronal activity while performing a sensorimotor synchronization task with a rhythmic and metrically structured auditory sequence. Then, we introduced sudden changes in the metrical structure of the stimulus and the subjects (N=10) had to adjust their tapping pattern to fit the new meter.
After co-registration of the functional data with the anatomical MRI, we used Synthetic Aperture Magnetometry (SAM) beam-former (Robinson and Vrba, 1999) to estimate the time course of activation from each source inside the brain in milliseconds time resolution and reasonable (5x5x5 mm) spatial resolution. Using this method we can see in a movie-like fashion the development of activity and its motion among cortical areas with a few ms time-resolution. In this manner we were able to construct a network of activation and test the dynamics of the neuronal processes related to rhythm perception.
Our results demonstrate the activation pattern following a change in the musical meter of the auditory sequence in both group averaged results and at the single subject level. We found that while the group averaged data showed differences in activation between the change condition and synchronized tapping, at the single subject level we found different activation patterns for each subject indicating that each subject might activate a different network in order to perform such high level cognitive process.
References
Robinson SE, Vrba J. (1999). Functional neuroimaging by synthetic aperture magnetometry (SAM). In Recent Advances in Biomagnetism. Tohoku University Press Tohoku, Japan, 302-5.
Keywords:
Magnetoencephalography (MEG),
Musical rhythm,
Synthetic Aperture Magnetometry (SAM),
source localization,
sensorimotor integration
Conference:
Imaging the brain at different scales: How to integrate multi-scale structural information?, Antwerp, Belgium, 2 Sep - 6 Sep, 2013.
Presentation Type:
Poster presentation
Topic:
Poster session
Citation:
Tal
I and
Abeles
M
(2013). Neural Dynamics of Sensorimotor Synchronization.
Front. Neuroinform.
Conference Abstract:
Imaging the brain at different scales: How to integrate multi-scale structural information?.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fninf.2013.10.00034
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Received:
31 Jul 2013;
Published Online:
31 Aug 2013.
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Correspondence:
Mr. Idan Tal, Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel, idantal00@gmail.com