title: Tones and numbers: a combined EEG-MEG study on the effects of musical expertise in magnitude comparisons of audiovisual stimuli.
abstract: This study investigated the cortical responses underlying magnitude comparisons of multisensory stimuli and examined the effect that musical expertise has in this process. The comparative judgments were based on a newly learned rule binding the auditory and visual stimuli within the context of magnitude comparisons: "the higher the pitch of the tone, the larger the number presented." The cortical responses were measured by simultaneous MEG\EEG recordings and a combined source analysis with individualized realistic head models was performed. Musical expertise effects were investigated by comparing musicians to non-musicians. Congruent audiovisual stimuli, corresponding to the newly learned rule, elicited activity in frontotemporal and occipital areas. In contrast, incongruent stimuli activated temporal and parietal regions. Musicians when compared with nonmusicians showed increased differences between congruent and incongruent stimuli in a prefrontal region, thereby indicating that music expertise may affect multisensory comparative judgments within a generalized representation of analog magnitude.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Biomagnetism and Biosignalanalysis, University of Münster, Germany; Laboratory of Medical Physics, School of Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.
authors.forename: Evangelos
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Paraskevopoulos
authors.forename: Anja
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kuchenbuch
authors.forename: Sibylle C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Herholz
authors.forename: Nikolaos
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Foroglou
authors.forename: Panagiotis
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Bamidis
authors.forename: Christo
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pantev
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D015225:Magnetoencephalography; D008297:Male; D008433:Mathematics; D009146:Music; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D010898:Pitch Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: MEG; audio-visual EEG; multisensory integration; neuroscience of music; plasticity