The music of silence: Imagining a song triggers similar brain activity
to moments of mid-music silence

Date:
August 3, 2021
Source:
Trinity College Dublin
Summary:
Imagining a song triggers similar brain activity as moments of
silence in music, according to new research. The results reveal how
the brain continues responding to music, even when none is playing,
and provide new insights into how human sensory predictions work.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Imagining a song triggers similar brain activity as moments of silence
in music, according to a pair of just-published studies in the Journal
of Neuroscience.


==========================================================================
The results collectively reveal how the brain continues responding to
music, even when none is playing, and provide new insights into how
human sensory predictions work.

Music is more than a sensory experience When we listen to music, the
brain attempts to predict what comes next. A surprise, such as a loud
note or disharmonious chord, increases brain activity.

To isolate the brain's prediction signal from the signal produced
in response to the actual sensory experience, researchers used electroencephalograms (EEGs) to measure the brain activity of musicians
while they listened to or imagined Bach piano melodies.

When imagining music, the musicians' brain activity had the opposite
electrical polarity to when they listened to it -- indicating different
brain activations -- but the same type of activity as for imagery occurred
in silent moments of the songs when people would have expected a note
but there wasn't one.

Explaining the significance of the results, Giovanni Di Liberto, Assistant Professor in Intelligent Systems in Trinity's School of Computer Science
and Statistics, said: "There is no sensory input during silence and
imagined music, so the neural activity we discovered is coming purely from
the brain's predictions e.g., the brain's internal model of music. Even
though the silent time-intervals do not have an input sound, we found consistent patterns of neural activity in those intervals, indicating
that the brain reacts to both notes and silences of music.

"Ultimately, this underlines that music is more than a sensory experience
for the brain as it engages the brain in a continuous attempt of
predicting upcoming musical events. Our study has isolated the neural
activity produced by that prediction process. And our results suggest
that such prediction processes are at the foundation of both music
listening and imagery.

"We used music listening in these studies to investigate brain mechanisms
of sound processing and sensory prediction, but these curious findings
have wider implications -- from boosting our basic, fundamental scientific understanding, to applied settings such as in clinical research.

"For example, imagine a cognitive assessment protocol involving music listening. From a few minutes of EEG recordings during music listening,
we could derive several useful cognitive indicators, as music engages
a variety of brain functions, from sensory and prediction processes
to emotions.

Furthermore, consider that music listening is much more pleasant than
existing tasks." This work was supported by funding from the European
Research Council.

Professor Di Liberto performed the work while completing postdoctoral
positions at ENS Paris and Trinity, with Professor Shihab Shamma
(University of Maryland and ENS Paris) and his student Mr Guilhem Marion
(ENS Paris).

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Trinity_College_Dublin. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal References:
1. Guilhem Marion, Giovanni M. Di Liberto, Shihab A. Shamma. The
Music of
Silence. Part I: Responses to Musical Imagery Encode Melodic
Expectations and Acoustics. The Journal of Neuroscience, 2021;
JN-RM-0183-21 DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0183-21.2021
2. Giovanni M. Di Liberto, Guilhem Marion, Shihab A. Shamma. The
music of
silence. Part II: Music Listening Induces Imagery
Responses. The Journal of Neuroscience, 2021; JN-RM-0184-21 DOI:
10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0184-21.2021 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210803105600.htm

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