Music and the brain

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Music and the brain

• Tim Griffiths
• Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University
• Wellcome Centre for Imaging Neuroscience, UCL
• http//www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/t.d.griffiths/tdg.html
  

Supported by the Wellcome Trust (UK)
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WHY BOTHER?

• Bottom-up approach to a range of auditory
  disorders
• Study of auditory cognition how we make sense
  of the acoustic world
• Consideration of auditory cognition related to
  music includes some unusual and specific
  disorders
• Consideration of auditory cognition can also
  increase our understanding of common disorders
  developmental disorders (eg dyslexia),
  degenerative disorders (dementia) and psychiatric
  disorders

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STRUCTURE

• Normal and abnormal musical cognition in four
  movements
• Pitch and pitch disorders
• Timbre and timbre disorders
• Rhythm and rhythm disorders
• Emotion and emotional disorders

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PITCH A UNIVERSAL BUILDING BLOCK
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Pitch is not frequency
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Pitch is not frequency
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A brain centre for pitch human electrode studies

Medial lt-gt Lateral
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A brain centre for pitch human electrode studies

Lateral HG
Medial HG
Time-locked response STIMULUS REGULARITY
Secondary area
Secondary area
Primary cortex
time-locked activity
Induced activity
noise onset
regularity/pitch onset
Oscillatory activity 80-120Hz PERCEPTUAL CORRELATE
Recording study carried out at Iowa University
Medical Centre Kumar, Sedley, Nourski, Brugge,
Howard, Griffiths unpublished
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A brain centre for pitch functional imaging
Individual data Structural MRI Scan
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A brain centre for pitch functional imaging
Individual fMRI data Pitch Activation
noise - silence fixed pitch noise
Patterson, Uppenkamp, Johnsrude, Griffiths
(Neuron 2002)
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A brain centre for pitch

• Emerging evidence for a representation of the
  pitch of single notes in an area of secondary
  auditory cortex
• This area might be like the colour centre in the
  visual brain that represents the colour that we
  experience rather than the wavelength of light

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Pitch has dimensions that are mapped in the brain
Warren, Uppenkamp, Patterson, Griffiths (PNAS
2003)
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A network for melody passive listening
Individual fMRI data Pitch sequence
noise - silence fixed pitch matched
noise lively pitch fixed pitch
Patterson, Uppenkamp, Johnsrude, Griffiths
(Neuron 2002)
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A network for melody active task
FRONTAL activity with active task
Griffiths, Johnsrude, Dean, Green (NeuroReport
1999)
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Encoding and retrieval of melodies different
parts of the melody network
Posterior ENCODING areas activity increases with
the complexity of melodies
Overath, Cusack, Kumar, von Kriegstein, Warren,
Grube, Carlyon, Griffiths (PLoS Biology 2007)
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Encoding and retrieval of melodies different
parts of the melody network
Frontal RETRIEVAL areas
Overath, Cusack, Kumar, von Kriegstein, Warren,
Grube, Carlyon, Griffiths (PLoS Biology 2007)
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Tonal structure the highest level of melody
analysis
Janata, Birk, Van Horn, Leman, Tillmann, Bharucha
(Science 2002)
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Normal melody analysis

• More brain mechanisms are engaged for the
  analysis of melody than the pitch of single notes
• These areas are organised into specific networks
• Encoding and retrieval of melody engage different
  parts of the network
• High-level analysis of tonality engages distinct
  and general cognitive mechanisms in the frontal
  lobes

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ABNORMAL PITCH ANALYSIS
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PITCH DISORDERSExuberant pitch analysis musical
hallucinations
Griffiths (Brain 2000)
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PITCH DISORDERS Deficient pitch analysis due to
stroke
Summary of data about stroke patients with pitch
and melody disorders Stewart, von Kriegstein,
Warren, Griffiths (Brain 2006)
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PITCH DISORDERS Tone deafness a lifelong
disorder of pitch analysis
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PITCH DISORDERS Tone deafness a lifelong
disorder of pitch analysis
Che Guevara
Milton Friedman
Educated subjects with tone deafness cross the
political spectrum
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PITCH DISORDERS Tone deafness a critical
deficit in pitch perception
Interval 1
Interval 2
Task 1
500 Hz
Pitch
250 ms 50 ms
Interval 1
Interval 2
Task 2
500 Hz
Pitch
Interval 1
Interval 2
Task 3
500 Hz
Pitch
Foxton, Dean, Gee, Peretz, Griffiths (Brain 2004)
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PITCH DISORDERS Tone deafness screening
instrument (125,000 subjects)
http//www.delosis.com/listening/
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PITCH DISORDERS Tone deafness structural
changes in cortex
Hyde, Lerch, Zatorre, Griffiths, Evans, Peretz (J
Neurosci 2007)
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PITCH DISORDERS Tone deafness could it be
caused by a single gene?
Perfect family for analysis
proband
Family undergoing genetic analysis in
Newcastle Stewart, McDonald, Kumar, Chinnery,
Griffiths (unpublished)
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PITCH DISORDERS Tone deafness

• Example of how we can understand a complex
  disorder in terms of a low level perceptual
  deficit key deficit in pitch-pattern perception
• Structural brain changes are present in the
  normal network for pitch-pattern analysis
• This complex disorder could be caused by a single
  gene disrupting connectivity within the network
• A model for other developmental disorders?

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ABNORMAL PITCH-PATTERN ANALYSIS IN BRAIN DISORDER
Other ongoing Newcastle studies

• Developmental disorders pitch-pattern analysis
  in reading disorder and autism
• Degenerative disorders pitch-pattern analysis in
  dementia

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TIMBRE MUSICAL TEXTURE
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Timbre is not pitch
Multidimensional scaling reveals critical
dimensions of timbre From Menon, Levitin, Smith,
Lembke, Krasnow, Glazer, Glover, McAdams
(NeuroImage 2002)
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Distinct brain networks for timbre and pitch
analysis
STP
STS
Pitch change
Timbre change (spectral shape)
Warren, Jennings, Griffiths (NeuroImage 2005)
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The right-hemisphere system for timbre analysis
Dynamic Causal Modelling A Bayesian approach to
system identification 70 models tested Kumar,
Stephan, Warren, Friston, Griffiths (PLoS
Computational Biology 2007)
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TIMBRE DISORDERS Deficient timbre analysis in
stroke
Summary reports of timbre deficit after
stroke Stewart, von Kriegstein, Warren, Griffiths
(Brain 2006)
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TIMBRE DISORDERS Example

• Television producer with timbral symptoms after
  right-hemisphere stroke
• Normal perception of the pitch of individual
  notes
• Abnormal perception of timbre

Griffiths, Kumar, Warren, Stewart, Stephan,
Friston (Hearing Research 2007)
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TIMBRE DISORDERS Example
R
L
Griffiths, Kumar, Warren, Stewart, Stephan,
Friston (Hearing Research 2007)
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TIMBRE DISORDERS Example
Griffiths, Kumar, Warren, Stewart, Stephan,
Friston (Hearing Research 2007)
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RHYTHM MUSICAL TIMING
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Rhythm analysis a distinct network from pitch
and timbre
Xu, Liu, Ashe, Bushara (J. Neurosci 2006)
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RHYTHM DISORDERS Ongoing Newcastle studies

• Relationship between rhythm analysis and reading
  ability
• The effect of cerebellar degeneration on rhythm
  analysis
• The effect of basal ganglia disorders like
  Parkinsons disease on rhythm analysis

Grube, Griffiths (unpublished)
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EMOTION THE WHOLE POINT?
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Emotion music is more than a sum of its parts
Shivers Blood, Zatorre (PNAS 2001)
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EMOTIONAL DISORDERS An example
Tragedy when the feeling's gone and you can't
go on. Griffiths, Warren, Dean, Howard (JNNP
2004)
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EMOTIONAL THERAPY?

• Music can be a direct link to the emotional self
  could this be exploited in therapy?
• Recent Finnish study shows improved cognitive
  recovery after stroke in patients that listen to
  music according to a prescribed schedule
• Mechanism unclear an emotional effect?

Sarkamo, Tervienimi, Laitinen, Forsblom, Soinila,
Mikkonen, Autti, Silvennoinen, ErkKila, Laine,
Peretz, Hietanen (Brain 2008)
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Music and the brain Some preliminary comments
about the normal system

• Music uses a lot of brain
• Distinct networks process different components of
  music
• We now have tools to identify the exact system
  for different musical components
• The pitch and melody system is best characterised
  and is organised in a hierarchal fashion higher
  levels of auditory cognition involve more areas
  away from traditional auditory cortex
• Some aspects of music cannot be easily explained
  by the reductionist approach developed here
• The emotional effect of music has a distinct
  brain mechanism from other aspects of music
  processing that is similar to the emotional
  mechanism for other experiences

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Music and the brain Some preliminary comments
about brain disorder

• Because music analysis uses a lot of brain it is
  a potential target for a large number of brain
  disorders
• Musical disorders can be understood as disorders
  of particular musical components in a systematic
  way
• The systematic assessment of musical components
  can also allow understanding of auditory
  cognition in common brain disorders

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Workers

• Newcastle University Simon Baumann, Patrick
  Chinnery , Freya Cooper, Jessica Foxton, Manon
  Grube, Amanda Jennings , Sukhbinder Kumar,
  WiIliam Sedley
• Wellcome Centre for Imaging Neuroscience,
  University College London Katharina von
  Kriegstein , Tobias Overath, Jason Warren
• Centre for the Neural Basis of Hearing, Cambridge
  University Roy Patterson , Stephan Uppenkamp
• Goldsmiths College, London Claire McDonald,
• Lauren Stewart
• BRAMS, Montreal Krista Hyde, Isabelle Peretz,
  Robert Zatorre