Cerebellar patients demonstrate preserved implicit knowledge of association strengths in musical sequences.
Recent findings suggest the involvement of the cerebellum in perceptual and cognitive tasks. Our study investigated whether cerebellar patients show musical priming based on implicit knowledge of tonal-harmonic music. Participants performed speeded phoneme identification on sung target chords, which were either related or less-related to prime contexts in terms of the tonal-harmonic system. As groups, both cerebellar patients and age-matched controls showed facilitated processing for related targets, as previously observed for healthy young adults. The outcome suggests that an intact cerebellum is not mandatory for accessing implicit knowledge stored in long-term memory and for its influence on perception. One patient showed facilitated processing for less-related targets (suggesting sensory priming). The findings suggest directions for future research on auditory perception in cerebellar patients to further our understanding of cerebellar functions.
Tillmann
Barbara
B
CNRS-UMR 5020, Université Claude Bernard-Lyon 1, IFR 19, Neurosciences et Systèmes Sensoriels, 50 Av. Tony Garnier, F-69366 Lyon Cedex 07, France. barbara.tillmann@olfac.univ-lyonl.fr
Justus
Timothy
T
Bigand
Emmanuel
E
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001925:Brain Damage, Chronic / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002531:Cerebellum / Q000473:pathology / Q000502:physiology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D016555:Matched-Pair Analysis; D008875:Middle Aged; D009146:Music; D046709:Pattern Recognition, Physiological / Q000502:physiology; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D012016:Reference Values; D012691:Serial Learning / Q000502:physiology