title: You can't stop the music: reduced auditory alpha power and coupling between auditory and memory regions facilitate the illusory perception of music during noise.
abstract: Our brain has the capacity of providing an experience of hearing even in the absence of auditory stimulation. This can be seen as illusory conscious perception. While increasing evidence postulates that conscious perception requires specific brain states that systematically relate to specific patterns of oscillatory activity, the relationship between auditory illusions and oscillatory activity remains mostly unexplained. To investigate this we recorded brain activity with magnetoencephalography and collected intracranial data from epilepsy patients while participants listened to familiar as well as unknown music that was partly replaced by sections of pink noise. We hypothesized that participants have a stronger experience of hearing music throughout noise when the noise sections are embedded in familiar compared to unfamiliar music. This was supported by the behavioral results showing that participants rated the perception of music during noise as stronger when noise was presented in a familiar context. Time-frequency data show that the illusory perception of music is associated with a decrease in auditory alpha power pointing to increased auditory cortex excitability. Furthermore, the right auditory cortex is concurrently synchronized with the medial temporal lobe, putatively mediating memory aspects associated with the music illusion. We thus assume that neuronal activity in the highly excitable auditory cortex is shaped through extensive communication between the auditory cortex and the medial temporal lobe, thereby generating the illusion of hearing music during noise.
authors.affiliation: Università degli Studi di Trento, Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, Via delle Regole 101, Mattarello, 38123 TN, Italy. nadia.mueller@gmail.com
authors.forename: Nadia
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Müller
authors.forename: Julian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Keil
authors.forename: Jonas
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Obleser
authors.forename: Hannah
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Schulz
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Grunwald
authors.forename: René-Ludwig
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Bernays
authors.forename: Hans-Jürgen
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Huppertz
authors.forename: Nathan
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Weisz
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000513:Alpha Rhythm; D001303:Auditory Cortex / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001307:Auditory Perception; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004827:Epilepsy / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007088:Illusions; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D009146:Music; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000503:physiopathology; D009622:Noise; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology*