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Neural tracking of the musical beat is enhanced by low-frequency sounds
Music makes us move, and using bass instruments to build the rhythmic foundations of music is especially effective at inducing people to dance to periodic pulse-like beats. Here, we show that this culturally widespread practice may exploit a neurophysiological mechanism whereby low-frequency sounds...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
National Academy of Sciences
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6094140/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30037989 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1801421115 |
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author | Lenc, Tomas Keller, Peter E. Varlet, Manuel Nozaradan, Sylvie |
author_facet | Lenc, Tomas Keller, Peter E. Varlet, Manuel Nozaradan, Sylvie |
author_sort | Lenc, Tomas |
collection | PubMed |
description | Music makes us move, and using bass instruments to build the rhythmic foundations of music is especially effective at inducing people to dance to periodic pulse-like beats. Here, we show that this culturally widespread practice may exploit a neurophysiological mechanism whereby low-frequency sounds shape the neural representations of rhythmic input by boosting selective locking to the beat. Cortical activity was captured using electroencephalography (EEG) while participants listened to a regular rhythm or to a relatively complex syncopated rhythm conveyed either by low tones (130 Hz) or high tones (1236.8 Hz). We found that cortical activity at the frequency of the perceived beat is selectively enhanced compared with other frequencies in the EEG spectrum when rhythms are conveyed by bass sounds. This effect is unlikely to arise from early cochlear processes, as revealed by auditory physiological modeling, and was particularly pronounced for the complex rhythm requiring endogenous generation of the beat. The effect is likewise not attributable to differences in perceived loudness between low and high tones, as a control experiment manipulating sound intensity alone did not yield similar results. Finally, the privileged role of bass sounds is contingent on allocation of attentional resources to the temporal properties of the stimulus, as revealed by a further control experiment examining the role of a behavioral task. Together, our results provide a neurobiological basis for the convention of using bass instruments to carry the rhythmic foundations of music and to drive people to move to the beat. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6094140 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | National Academy of Sciences |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-60941402018-08-17 Neural tracking of the musical beat is enhanced by low-frequency sounds Lenc, Tomas Keller, Peter E. Varlet, Manuel Nozaradan, Sylvie Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Biological Sciences Music makes us move, and using bass instruments to build the rhythmic foundations of music is especially effective at inducing people to dance to periodic pulse-like beats. Here, we show that this culturally widespread practice may exploit a neurophysiological mechanism whereby low-frequency sounds shape the neural representations of rhythmic input by boosting selective locking to the beat. Cortical activity was captured using electroencephalography (EEG) while participants listened to a regular rhythm or to a relatively complex syncopated rhythm conveyed either by low tones (130 Hz) or high tones (1236.8 Hz). We found that cortical activity at the frequency of the perceived beat is selectively enhanced compared with other frequencies in the EEG spectrum when rhythms are conveyed by bass sounds. This effect is unlikely to arise from early cochlear processes, as revealed by auditory physiological modeling, and was particularly pronounced for the complex rhythm requiring endogenous generation of the beat. The effect is likewise not attributable to differences in perceived loudness between low and high tones, as a control experiment manipulating sound intensity alone did not yield similar results. Finally, the privileged role of bass sounds is contingent on allocation of attentional resources to the temporal properties of the stimulus, as revealed by a further control experiment examining the role of a behavioral task. Together, our results provide a neurobiological basis for the convention of using bass instruments to carry the rhythmic foundations of music and to drive people to move to the beat. National Academy of Sciences 2018-08-07 2018-07-23 /pmc/articles/PMC6094140/ /pubmed/30037989 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1801421115 Text en Copyright © 2018 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Biological Sciences Lenc, Tomas Keller, Peter E. Varlet, Manuel Nozaradan, Sylvie Neural tracking of the musical beat is enhanced by low-frequency sounds |
title | Neural tracking of the musical beat is enhanced by low-frequency sounds |
title_full | Neural tracking of the musical beat is enhanced by low-frequency sounds |
title_fullStr | Neural tracking of the musical beat is enhanced by low-frequency sounds |
title_full_unstemmed | Neural tracking of the musical beat is enhanced by low-frequency sounds |
title_short | Neural tracking of the musical beat is enhanced by low-frequency sounds |
title_sort | neural tracking of the musical beat is enhanced by low-frequency sounds |
topic | Biological Sciences |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6094140/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30037989 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1801421115 |
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