title: Auditory organization of sound sequences by a temporal or numerical regularity--a mismatch negativity study comparing musicians and non-musicians.
abstract: The human auditory system can encode regularities in the acoustic environment without the requirement of attention. We investigated whether the auditory system of musicians is more sensitive than that of non-musicians in encoding complex regularities. We presented tone sequences containing either a temporal or a numerical regularity. The sequence with the temporal regularity could be divided into segments of a constant duration while the segments contained a varying number of tones. The sequence with the numerical regularity, on the other hand, could be divided into segments containing a constant number of tones while the segments varied in duration. Auditory encoding of the regularity was determined by measuring whether an occasional segment lengthening, either in time or by number elicited the mismatch negativity (MMN). In both musicians and non-musicians, an MMN was elicited when the temporal regularity was violated. In contrast, only in musicians an MMN was elicited to violations of the numerical regularity. The results show that temporal processing is of general importance in audition since at an involuntary auditory processing stage a complex temporal regularity can be encoded irrespective of musical expertise. Furthermore, the auditory system of professional musicians can encode a numerical regularity without attention being required reflecting the functional importance of beat tracking in the perceptual organization of music.
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Department of Psychology, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 9 (Siltavuorenpenger 20 C), FIN-00014 Helsinki, Finland. titia@cbru.helsinki.fi
authors.forename: Titia L
authors.initials: TL
authors.lastname: van Zuijen
authors.forename: Elyse
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Sussman
authors.forename: István
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Winkler
authors.forename: Risto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Näätänen
authors.forename: Mari
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tervaniemi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D004566:Electrodes; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009146:Music; D009790:Occupations; D012535:Scalp; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D013998:Time Perception / Q000502:physiology*