Cortical activity during naturalistic music listening reflects short-range predictions based on long-term experience
Abstract
Expectations shape our experience of music. However, the internal model upon which listeners form melodic expectations is still debated. Do expectations stem from Gestalt-like principles or statistical learning? If the latter, does long-term experience play an important role, or are short-term regularities sufficient? And finally, what length of context informs contextual expectations? To answer these questions, we presented human listeners with diverse naturalistic compositions from Western classical music, while recording neural activity using MEG. We quantified note-level melodic surprise and uncertainty using various computational models of music, including a state-of-the-art transformer neural network. A time-resolved regression analysis revealed that neural activity over fronto-temporal sensors tracked melodic surprise particularly around 200 ms and 300–500 ms after note onset. This neural surprise response was dissociated from sensory-acoustic and adaptation effects. Neural surprise was best predicted by computational models that incorporated long-term statistical learning – rather than by simple, Gestalt-like principles. Yet, intriguingly, the surprise reflected primarily short-range musical contexts of less than ten notes. We present a full replication of our novel MEG results in an openly available EEG dataset. Together, these results elucidate the internal model that shapes melodic predictions during naturalistic music listening.
Data availability
All data have been deposited into the Donders Repository under CC-BY-4.0 license, under identifier https://doi.org/10.34973/5qxw-nn97 . (NOTE: The persistent doi is not yet active during peer review! Data are available to reviewers with a special reviewer access link provided in the manuscript.)
-
Tracking predictions in naturalistic music listening using MEG and computational models of musicDonders Repository, doi:10.34973/5qxw-nn97.
-
Cortical encoding of melodic expectations in human temporal cortexDryad Digital Repository, doi:10.5061/dryad.g1jwstqmh.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (016.Veni.198.065)
- Eelke Spaak
European Research Council (101000942)
- Floris P de Lange
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Human subjects: The study was approved under the general ethical approval for the Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging (Imaging Human Cognition, CMO2014/288) by the local ethics committee (CMO Arnhem-Nijmegen, Radboud University Medical Centre). Participants provided written informed consent before the experiment and received monetary compensation.
Copyright
© 2022, Kern et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 2,726
- views
-
- 334
- downloads
-
- 22
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Further reading
-
- Neuroscience
Cerebellar dysfunction leads to postural instability. Recent work in freely moving rodents has transformed investigations of cerebellar contributions to posture. However, the combined complexity of terrestrial locomotion and the rodent cerebellum motivate new approaches to perturb cerebellar function in simpler vertebrates. Here, we adapted a validated chemogenetic tool (TRPV1/capsaicin) to describe the role of Purkinje cells — the output neurons of the cerebellar cortex — as larval zebrafish swam freely in depth. We achieved both bidirectional control (activation and ablation) of Purkinje cells while performing quantitative high-throughput assessment of posture and locomotion. Activation modified postural control in the pitch (nose-up/nose-down) axis. Similarly, ablations disrupted pitch-axis posture and fin-body coordination responsible for climbs. Postural disruption was more widespread in older larvae, offering a window into emergent roles for the developing cerebellum in the control of posture. Finally, we found that activity in Purkinje cells could individually and collectively encode tilt direction, a key feature of postural control neurons. Our findings delineate an expected role for the cerebellum in postural control and vestibular sensation in larval zebrafish, establishing the validity of TRPV1/capsaicin-mediated perturbations in a simple, genetically tractable vertebrate. Moreover, by comparing the contributions of Purkinje cell ablations to posture in time, we uncover signatures of emerging cerebellar control of posture across early development. This work takes a major step towards understanding an ancestral role of the cerebellum in regulating postural maturation.
-
- Neuroscience
Human-specific cognitive abilities depend on information processing in the cerebral cortex, where the neurons are significantly larger and their processes longer and sparser compared to rodents. We found that, in synaptically connected layer 2/3 pyramidal cells (L2/3 PCs), the delay in signal propagation from soma to soma is similar in humans and rodents. To compensate for the longer processes of neurons, membrane potential changes in human axons and/or dendrites must propagate faster. Axonal and dendritic recordings show that the propagation speed of action potentials (APs) is similar in human and rat axons, but the forward propagation of excitatory postsynaptic potentials (EPSPs) and the backward propagation of APs are 26 and 47% faster in human dendrites, respectively. Experimentally-based detailed biophysical models have shown that the key factor responsible for the accelerated EPSP propagation in human cortical dendrites is the large conductance load imposed at the soma by the large basal dendritic tree. Additionally, larger dendritic diameters and differences in cable and ion channel properties in humans contribute to enhanced signal propagation. Our integrative experimental and modeling study provides new insights into the scaling rules that help maintain information processing speed albeit the large and sparse neurons in the human cortex.