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Psychophysiology
09, 2019;56 (9): e13394.

Abnormal neural responses to harmonic syntactic structures in congenital amusia.

Linshu Zhou, Fang Liu, Jun Jiang, Hanyuan Jiang, Cunmei Jiang
Author Information
  1. Linshu Zhou: Music College, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China. ORCID
  2. Fang Liu: School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, UK.
  3. Jun Jiang: Music College, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China.
  4. Hanyuan Jiang: Faculty of Humanities and Arts, Macau University of Science and Technology, Macau, China.
  5. Cunmei Jiang: Music College, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China. ORCID
PMID: 31111968 DOI: 10.1111/psyp.13394

Abstract

In music, harmonic syntactic structures are organized hierarchically through local and long-distance dependencies. This study investigated whether congenital amusia, a neurodevelopmental disorder of pitch perception, is associated with impaired processing of harmonic syntactic structures. For stimuli, we used harmonic sequences containing two phrases, where the first phrase ended with a half cadence and the second with an authentic cadence. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the ending chord of the authentic cadence to be either syntactically regular or irregular based on local dependencies. Sixteen amusics and 16 controls judged the expectedness of these chords while their EEG waveforms were recorded. In comparison to the regular endings, irregular endings elicited an ERAN, an N5, and a late positive component in controls but not in amusics, indicating that amusics were impaired in processing local syntactic dependencies. In Experiment 2, we manipulated the half cadence of the harmonic sequences to either adhere to or violate long-distance syntactic dependencies. In response to irregular harmonic sequences, an ERAN-like component and an N5 were elicited in controls but not in amusics, suggesting that amusics were impaired in processing long-distance syntactic dependencies. Furthermore, for controls, the neural processing of local and long-distance syntactic dependencies was correlated at the later integration stage but not at the early detection stage. These findings indicate that amusia is associated with impairment in the detection and integration of local and long-distance syntactic violations. The implications of these findings in terms of hierarchical music-syntactic processing are discussed.

Keywords

congenital amusia harmonic syntax hierarchical structure local dependency long-distance dependency

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Grants

  1. 678733/European Research Council

MeSH Term

Adult
Auditory Perception
Auditory Perceptual Disorders
Electroencephalography
Evoked Potentials, Auditory
Female
Humans
Male
Music
Young Adult
Journal Article Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Article has an altmetric score of 1

Word Cloud

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