title: Hearing, feeling or seeing a beat recruits a supramodal network in the auditory dorsal stream.
abstract: Hearing a beat recruits a wide neural network that involves the auditory cortex and motor planning regions. Perceiving a beat can potentially be achieved via vision or even touch, but it is currently not clear whether a common neural network underlies beat processing. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to test to what extent the neural network involved in beat processing is supramodal, that is, is the same in the different sensory modalities. Brain activity changes in 27 healthy volunteers were monitored while they were attending to the same rhythmic sequences (with and without a beat) in audition, vision and the vibrotactile modality. We found a common neural network for beat detection in the three modalities that involved parts of the auditory dorsal pathway. Within this network, only the putamen and the supplementary motor area (SMA) showed specificity to the beat, while the brain activity in the putamen covariated with the beat detection speed. These results highlighted the implication of the auditory dorsal stream in beat detection, confirmed the important role played by the putamen in beat detection and indicated that the neural network for beat detection is mostly supramodal. This constitutes a new example of convergence of the same functional attributes into one centralized representation in the brain.
authors.affiliation: Université catholique de Louvain, 54 Avenue Hippocrate UCL B1.54.09, 1200, Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Rodrigo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Araneda
authors.affiliation: Université catholique de Louvain, 54 Avenue Hippocrate UCL B1.54.09, 1200, Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Laurent
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Renier
authors.affiliation: Université catholique de Louvain, 54 Avenue Hippocrate UCL B1.54.09, 1200, Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Daniela
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ebner-Karestinos
authors.affiliation: Université catholique de Louvain, 54 Avenue Hippocrate UCL B1.54.09, 1200, Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Laurence
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Dricot
authors.affiliation: Université catholique de Louvain, 54 Avenue Hippocrate UCL B1.54.09, 1200, Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Anne G
authors.initials: AG
authors.lastname: De Volder
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception; D006801:Humans; D011699:Putamen / Q000502:physiology*; D055698:Touch Perception; D014796:Visual Perception
keywords: beat perception; multisensory integration; rhythm perception; touch; vision