Mireille Besson

Processing Syntactic Relations in Language and Music: An Event-Related Potential Study

In order to test the language-specificity of a known neural correlate of syntactic processing the P600 event-related brain potential (ERP) component, this study directly compared ERPs elicited by syntactic incongruities in language and music. Using principles of phrase structure for language and principles of harmony and key-relatedness for music, sequences were constructed in which an element was either congruous, moderately incongruous, or highly incongruous with the preceding structural context. A within-subjects design using 15 musically educated adults revealed that linguistic and musical structural incongruities elicited positivities that were statistically indistinguishable in a specified latency range. In contrast, a music-specific ERP component was observed that showed antero-temporal right-hemisphere lateralization. The results argue against the language-specificity of the P600 and suggest that language and music can be studied in parallel to address questions of neural specificity in cognitive processing.

Musical Training Influences Linguistic Abilities in 8-Year-Old Children: More Evidence for Brain Plasticity

We conducted a longitudinal study with 32 nonmusician children over 9 months to determine 1) whether functional differences between musician and nonmusician children reflect specific predispositions for music or result from musical training and 2) whether musical training improves nonmusical brain functions such as reading and linguistic pitch processing. Event-related brain potentials were recorded while 8-year-old children performed tasks designed to test the hypothesis that musical training improves pitch processing not only in music but also in speech. Following the first testing sessions nonmusician children were pseudorandomly assigned to music or to painting training for 6 months and were tested again after training using the same tests. After musical (but not painting) training, children showed enhanced reading and pitch discrimination abilities in speech. Remarkably, 6 months of musical training thus suffices to significantly improve behavior and to influence the development of neural processes as reflected in specific pattern of brain waves. These results reveal positive transfer from music to speech and highlight the influence of musical training. Finally, they demonstrate brain plasticity in showing that relatively short periods of training have strong consequences on the functional organization of the childrens brain.

Musician Children Detect Pitch Violations in Both Music and Language Better than Nonmusician Children: Behavioral and Electrophysiological Approaches

The idea that extensive musical training can influence processing in cognitive domains other than music has received considerable attention from the educational system and the media. Here we analyzed behavioral data and recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs) from 8-year-old children to test the hypothesis that musical training facilitates pitch processing not only in music but also in language. We used a parametric manipulation of pitch so that the final notes or words of musical phrases or sentences were congruous, weakly incongruous, or strongly incongruous. Musician children outperformed nonmusician children in the detection of the weak incongruity in both music and language. Moreover, the greatest differences in the ERPs of musician and nonmusician children were also found for the weak incongruity: whereas for musician children, early negative components developed in music and late positive components in language, no such components were found for nonmusician children. Finally, comparison of these results with previous ones from adults suggests that some aspects of pitch processing are in effect earlier in music than in language. Thus, the present results reveal positive transfer effects between cognitive domains and shed light on the time course and neural basis of the development of prosodic and melodic processing.

An event-related potential (erp) analysis of semantic congruity and repetition effects in sentences

In two experiments, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and cued-recall performance measures were used to examine the consequences of semantic congruity and repetition on the processing of words in sentences. A set of sentences, half of which ended with words that rendered them semantically incongruous, was repeated either once (eg, Experiment 1) or twice (e.g., Experiment 2). After each block of sentences, subjects were given all of the sentences and asked to recall the missing final words. Repetition benefited the recall of both congruous and incongruous endings and reduced the amplitude and shortened the duration of the N400 component of the ERP more for (1) incongruous than congruous words, (2) open class than closed class words, and (3) low-frequency than high-frequency open class words. For incongruous sentence terminations, repetition increased the amplitude of a broad positive component subsequent to the N400. Assuming additive factors logic and a traditional view of the lexicon, our N400 results indicate that in addition to their singular effects, semantic congruiry, repetition, and word frequency converge to influence a common stage of lexical processing. Within a parallel distributed processing framework, our results argue for substantial temporal and spatial overlap in the activation of codes subserving word recognition so as to yield the observed interactions of repetition with semantic congruity, lexical class, and word frequency effects.

Transfer of training between music and speech: common processing, attention, and memory

After a brief historical perspective of the relationship between language and music, we review our work on transfer of training from music to speech that aimed at testing the general hypothesis that musicians should be more sensitive than non-musicians to speech sounds. In light of recent results in the literature, we argue that when long-term experience in one domain influences acoustic processing in the other domain, results can be interpreted as common acoustic processing. But when long-term experience in one domain influences the building-up of abstract and specific percepts in another domain, results are taken as evidence for transfer of training effects. Moreover, we also discuss the influence of attention and working memory on transfer effects and we highlight the usefulness of the event-related potentials method to disentangle the different processes that unfold in the course of music and speech perception. Finally, we give an overview of an on-going longitudinal project with children aimed at testing transfer effects from music to different levels and aspects of speech processing.

Musicians Detect Pitch Violation in a Foreign Language Better Than Nonmusicians: Behavioral and Electrophysiological Evidence

The aim of this study was to determine whether musical expertise influences the detection of pitch variations in a foreign language that participants did not understand. To this end, French adults, musicians and nonmusicians, were presented with sentences spoken in Portuguese. The final words of the sentences were prosodically congruous (spoken at normal pitch height) or incongruous (pitch was increased by 35% or 120%). Results showed that when the pitch deviations were small and difficult to detect (35%: weak prosodic incongruities), the level of performance was higher for musicians than for nonmusicians. Moreover, analysis of the time course of pitch processing, as revealed by the event-related brain potentials to the prosodically congruous and incongruous sentence-final words, showed that musicians were, on average, 300 msec faster than nonmusicians to categorize prosodically congruous and incongruous endings. These results are in line with previous ones showing that musical expertise, by increasing discrimination of pitcha basic acoustic parameter equally important for music and speech prosodydoes facilitate the processing of pitch variations not only in music but also in language. Finally, comparison with previous results [Schn, D., Magne, C., & Besson, M. The music of speech: Music training facilitates pitch processing in both music and language. Psychophysiology, 41, 341349, 2004] points to the influence of semantics on the perception of acoustic prosodic cues.

Songs as an aid for language acquisition

In previous research, Saffran and colleagues [Saffran, J. R., Aslin, R. N., & Newport, E. L. (1996). Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants. Science, 274, 1926-1928; Saffran, J. R., Newport, E. L., & Aslin, R. N. (1996). Word segmentation: The role of distributional cues. Journal of Memory and Language, 35, 606-621.] have shown that adults and infants can use the statistical properties of syllable sequences to extract words from continuous speech. They also showed that a similar learning mechanism operates with musical stimuli [Saffran, J. R., Johnson, R. E. K., Aslin, N., & Newport, E. L. (1999). Abstract Statistical learning of tone sequences by human infants and adults. Cognition, 70, 27-52.]. In this work we combined linguistic and musical information and we compared language learning based on speech sequences to language learning based on sung sequences. We hypothesized that, compared to speech sequences, a consistent mapping of linguistic and musical information would enhance learning. Results confirmed the hypothesis showing a strong learning facilitation of song compared to speech. Most importantly, the present results show that learning a new language, especially in the first learning phase wherein one needs to segment new words, may largely benefit of the motivational and structuring properties of music in song.

Music Training for the Development of Speech Segmentation

The role of music training in fostering brain plasticity and developing high cognitive skills, notably linguistic abilities, is of great interest from both a scientific and a societal perspective. Here, we report results of a longitudinal study over 2 years using both behavioral and electrophysiological measures and a test-training-retest procedure to examine the influence of music training on speech segmentation in 8-year-old children. Children were pseudo-randomly assigned to either music or painting training and were tested on their ability to extract meaningless words from a continuous flow of nonsense syllables. While no between-group differences were found before training, both behavioral and electrophysiological measures showed improved speech segmentation skills across testing sessions for the music group only. These results show that music training directly causes facilitation in speech segmentation, thereby pointing to the importance of music for speech perception and more generally for childrens language development. Finally these results have strong implications for promoting the development of music-based remediation strategies for children with language-based learning impairments.

Different Brain Mechanisms Mediate Sensitivity to Sensory Consonance and Harmonic Context: Evidence from Auditory Event-Related Brain Potentials

The goal of this study was to analyze the time-course of sensory (bottom-up) and cognitive (top-down) processes that govern musical harmonic expectancy. Eight-chord sequences were presented to 12 musicians and 12 nonmusicians. Expectations for the last chord were manipulated both at the sensory level (i.e., the last chord was sensory consonant or dissonant) and at the cognitive level (the harmonic function of the target was varied by manipulating the harmonic context built up by the first six chords of the sequence). Changes in the harmonic function of the target chord mainly modulate the amplitude of a positive component peaking around 300 msec (P3) after target onset, reflecting top-down influences on the perceptual stages of processing. In contrast, changes in the acoustic structure of the target chord (sensory consonance) mainly modulate the amplitude of a late positive component that develops between 300 and 800 msec after target onset. Most importantly, the effects of sensory consonance and harmonic context on the event-related brain potentials associated with the target chords were found to be independent, thus suggesting that two separate processors contribute to the building up of musical expectancy.

Semantic, repetition and rime priming between spoken words: behavioral and electrophysiological evidence

Semantic, phonological and repetition priming for auditorily presented words were examined, using both behavioral reaction times (RTs) and electrophysiological event-related potentials (ERPs) measures. On critical trials, a word prime was followed by a word target that was semantically or phonologically related (rime) or not related (control) to the prime. Pairs of word-pseudoword items served as fillers. Participants were asked to respond to word targets in the RT experiment and to pseudowords in the ERP experiment. In each experiment stimuli were presented once and then repeated in the very same way. RTs were found to be fastest for semantic, intermediate for rime and slowest for control targets; large repetition effects occurred for all targets. ERPs results showed that both semantic and phonological priming influenced the same component, namely the N400, whose amplitude was smallest to semantic, intermediate to rime and largest to control targets; repetition effects were only found for semantic trials.