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Prolonged exposure to highly rhythmic music affects brain dynamics and perception
Cosima Lanzilotti1, Remy Dumas2, Massimo Grassi3
1Aix Marseille Univ, Inserm, INS, Inst Neurosci Syst, Marseille, France.
Neuropsychologia
|April 25, 2019
Summary
Longer, regular rhythmic music may impair auditory perception by increasing thresholds and reducing neural responses. This contrasts with short stimulation, suggesting engagement limits sensory processing.
Area of Science:
- Auditory Neuroscience
- Psychophysics
- Music Perception
Background:
- Rhythmic stimulation enhances auditory temporal prediction.
- Prolonged rhythmic music can induce altered states of consciousness.
- The impact of stimulation duration and regularity on auditory perception is not fully understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how stimulation duration and musical regularity affect auditory perception.
- To track changes in psychophysical auditory thresholds during auditory monitoring tasks.
- To explore the neural correlates of these perceptual changes.
Main Methods:
- An auditory monitoring task was designed to measure psychophysical auditory thresholds.
- Participants listened to regular and irregular music under intermittent (short) and continuous (long) stimulation conditions.
- Event-related potentials (ERPs) and electroencephalography (EEG) in the alpha band were analyzed.
Main Results:
- Continuous stimulation significantly increased auditory thresholds compared to intermittent stimulation.
- This increase was accompanied by reduced amplitudes of event-related potentials.
- Effects were more pronounced with regular music, suggesting engagement, not just duration, plays a role.
- Increased alpha band network connectivity between frontal and central regions was observed.
Conclusions:
- The facilitatory effect of rhythmic stimulation on perception may be limited to short auditory streams.
- Long, regular, and engaging rhythmic stimuli can negatively impact auditory perception.
- Neural coupling and network connectivity changes underlie the perceptual effects of prolonged rhythmic stimulation.
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