Papers by Roni Yeger-Granot
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2019
How can music-merely a stream of sounds-be enjoyable for so many people? Recent accounts of this ... more How can music-merely a stream of sounds-be enjoyable for so many people? Recent accounts of this phenomenon are inspired by predictive coding models, hypothesizing that both confirmation and violations of musical expectations associate with the hedonic response to music via recruitment of the mesolimbic system and its connections with the auditory cortex. Here we provide support for this model, by revealing associations of music-induced pleasantness with musical surprises in the activity and connectivity patterns of the nucleus accumbens (NAcc)-a central component of the mesolimbic system. We examined neurobehavioral responses to surprises in three naturalistic musical pieces using fMRI and subjective ratings of valence and arousal. Surprises were associated with changes in reported valence and arousal, as well as with enhanced activations in the auditory cortex, insula and ventral striatum, relative to unsurprising events. Importantly, we found that surprise-related activation in the NAcc was more pronounced among individuals who experienced greater music-induced pleasantness. These participants also exhibited stronger surprise-related NAcc-auditory cortex connectivity during the most pleasant piece, relative to participants who found the music less pleasant. These findings provide a novel demonstration of a direct link between musical surprises, NAcc activation and music-induced pleasantness.
Proceedings of the Conference on Interdisciplinary …, 2004
Background in music theory. Music theorists and aestheticians have long suggested that musical ge... more Background in music theory. Music theorists and aestheticians have long suggested that musical gestures are isomorphic with expressive motion (eg, Kurth, 1991; Scruton, 1997). The ramifications of this hypothesis can be observed in attempts to map changes in diverse musical ...
Behavioral response to pitch (pure tone) change was probed, using the tapping methodology. Musici... more Behavioral response to pitch (pure tone) change was probed, using the tapping methodology. Musicians and non-musicians were asked to tap steadily to isochronous (2 Hz) beep sequences featuring pitch events: rise, fall, peak, valley, step-size change, and pitch re-stabilization. Peaks and valleys were presented in either early, middle or late ordinal position within sequences. Two non-western melodic step-sizes were used (144 and 288 cents). Inter-Tap Intervals (ITIs) were checked for correlations to melodic direction and step-size. Three contradicting predictions regarding response to melodic direction and step-size were proposed: a) based on musicians’ tendency to ‘rush’ on ascending melodic lines, the “High-Urgent” hypothesis predicted shortened ITIs in response to rising pitches; b) based on approach/withdrawal theories of perception and on ethological research showing lower pitches interpreted as more threatening, the “Flexor/Extensor” hypothesis predicted shorter ITIs in respon...
Frontiers in Psychology, 2021
Music can reduce stress and anxiety, enhance positive mood, and facilitate social bonding. Howeve... more Music can reduce stress and anxiety, enhance positive mood, and facilitate social bonding. However, little is known about the role of music and related personal or cultural (individualistic vs. collectivistic) variables in maintaining wellbeing during times of stress and social isolation as imposed by the COVID-19 crisis. In an online questionnaire, administered in 11 countries (Argentina, Brazil, China, Colombia, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, the UK, and USA, N = 5,619), participants rated the relevance of wellbeing goals during the pandemic, and the effectiveness of different activities in obtaining these goals. Music was found to be the most effective activity for three out of five wellbeing goals: enjoyment, venting negative emotions, and self-connection. For diversion, music was equally good as entertainment, while it was second best to create a sense of togetherness, after socialization. This result was evident across different countries and gender, with minor...
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2019
The question of the origin of music and its powers has always fascinated philosophers and scienti... more The question of the origin of music and its powers has always fascinated philosophers and scientists. Here we present a close reading of the view offered by the Persian Muslim philosopher and scientist Ibn Sīnā, also known as Avicenna (980–1037). We draw a parallel between Ibn Sīnā’s account of the senses and mental capacities and his hierarchical, quasi-evolutionary view of the perception of sound in its various communicative roles. We show how Ibn Sīnā positions music at the top of the organisation of sound while drawing a connecting line between the sensory and cognitive, the natural and conventional, and the biological and aesthetic. Although mostly drawing on ideas previously expounded by Aristotle and al-Fārābī, he goes way beyond his predecessors in positioning music within the systems of communication and highlights music's special ability to create a flux of joy and sadness, tension and relaxation, based on the ephemeral character of sound that serves as a connecting th...
Frontiers in Psychology, 2021
The strict lockdown experienced in Spain during March–June 2020 as a consequence of the COVID-19 ... more The strict lockdown experienced in Spain during March–June 2020 as a consequence of the COVID-19 crisis has led to strong negative emotions. Music can contribute to enhancing wellbeing, but the extent of this effect may be modulated by both personal and context-related variables. This study aimed to analyze the impact of the two types of variables on the perceived efficacy of musical behaviors to fulfill adults’ emotional wellbeing-related goals during the lockdown established in Spain. Personal variables included age, gender, musical training, personality, resilience, and perception of music’s importance. Contextual variables referred to living in a region with a high COVID-19 impact, perception of belonging to a risk group, being alone, having caring responsibilities during confinement, and amount of time of music listening as compared to prior to the crisis. The study was conducted retrospectively during August–December 2020, when the strict lockdown was over in Spain. An online ...
Journal of vision, Jan 21, 2014
Musicians' perceptual advantage in the acoustic domain is well established. Recent studies sh... more Musicians' perceptual advantage in the acoustic domain is well established. Recent studies show that musicians' verbal working memory is also superior. Additionally, some studies report that musicians' visuospatial skills are enhanced although others failed to find this enhancement. We now examined whether musicians' spatial vision is superior, and if so, whether this superiority reflects refined visual skills or a general superiority of working memory. We examined spatial frequency discrimination among musicians and nonmusician university students using two presentation conditions: simultaneous (spatial forced choice) and sequential (temporal forced choice). Musicians' performance was similar to that of nonmusicians in the simultaneous condition. However, their performance in the sequential condition was superior, suggesting an advantage only when stimuli need to be retained, i.e., working memory. Moreover, the two groups showed a different pattern of correlatio...
Jewish cantillation is a ritual chanting of readings from the Hebrew bible in the synagogue servi... more Jewish cantillation is a ritual chanting of readings from the Hebrew bible in the synagogue services. The chants are written using special signs or marks printed in the Hebrew Bible. The purpose of the cantillation signs is to guide the chanting of the sacred texts during public worship, and to clarify the syntactical structure of the text while the specifics of the performance serve in addition as a rehtorical device and as a commentary to the text itself, highlighting important or affective points in the text. Musical analysis of the cantillation requires a detailed estimation of the distributions of each of the cantillation signs. This can be achieved by manual annotation of the audio, but such a method is subjective and labor-intensive. Using high-precision computational methods we developed a framework for automatic extraction of cantilation signs performance from recordings and we show an objective, automatic analysis of one of the cantillation signs, Sof-Pasuq (end of verse)....
Music can reduce stress and anxiety, enhance positive mood, and facilitate social bonding. Howeve... more Music can reduce stress and anxiety, enhance positive mood, and facilitate social bonding. However, little is known about the role of music and related personal or cultural (individualistic vs. collectivistic) variables in maintaining wellbeing during times of stress and social isolation as imposed by the COVID-19 crisis. In an online questionnaire, administered in 11 countries (Argentina, Brazil, China, Colombia, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, the UK, and USA, N = 5,619), participants rated the relevance of wellbeing goals during the pandemic, and the effectiveness of different activities in obtaining these goals. Music was found to be the most effective activity for three out of five wellbeing goals: enjoyment, venting negative emotions, and self-connection. For diversion, music was equally good as entertainment, while it was second best to create a sense of togetherness, after socialization. This result was evident across different countries and gender, with minor effects of age on specific goals, and a clear effect of the importance of music in people's lives. Cultural effects were generally small and surfaced mainly in the use of music to obtain a sense of togetherness. Interestingly, culture moderated the use of negatively valenced and nostalgic music for those higher in distress.
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
The question of the origin of music and its powers has always fascinated philosophers and scienti... more The question of the origin of music and its powers has always fascinated philosophers and scientists. Here we present a close reading of the view offered by the Persian Muslim philosopher and scientist Ibn Sīnā, also known as Avicenna (980–1037). We draw a parallel between Ibn Sīnā’s account of the senses and mental capacities and his hierarchical, quasi-evolutionary view of the perception of sound in its various communicative roles. We show how Ibn Sīnā positions music at the top of the organisation of sound while drawing a connecting line between the sensory and cognitive, the natural and conventional, and the biological and aesthetic. Although mostly drawing on ideas previously expounded by Aristotle and al-Fārābī, he goes way beyond his predecessors in positioning music within the systems of communication and highlights music's special ability to create a flux of joy and sadness, tension and relaxation, based on the ephemeral character of sound that serves as a connecting th...
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Aug 1, 2009
One of the most studied effects of verbal working memory (WM) is the influence of the length of t... more One of the most studied effects of verbal working memory (WM) is the influence of the length of the words that compose the list to be remembered. This work aims to investigate the nature of musical WM by replicating the word length effect in the musical domain. Length and rate of presentation were manipulated in a recognition task of tone sequences. Results showed significant effects for both factors (length and presentation rate) as well as their interaction, suggesting the existence of different strategies (e.g., chunking and rehearsal) for the immediate memory of musical information, depending upon the length of the sequences.
Even within equitone isochronous sequences, listeners report perceiving some grouping and accenti... more Even within equitone isochronous sequences, listeners report perceiving some grouping and accenting of sound events. In a previous study we explored this phenomenon of "subjective rhythmisation" physiologically through brain event-related potentials (ERP). We found differences in the ERP responses to small loudness deviations introduced in different positions of isochronous sequences, even though all sound events were physically identical. These differences seemed to follow a binary pattern, with larger amplitudes in the response elicited by deviants in odd-numbered than in even-numbered positions. The experiments reported here were designed to test whether the differences observed corresponded to a metrical pattern, by using a similar design in sequences of a binary (long-short) or a ternary (long-short-short) meter. We found a similar pattern of results in the binary condition, but a different one, and less clear, in the ternary one. Moreover, the amplitude of the ERP re...
In previous reports we described a centro-frontal scalp-recorded event-related potential (ERP), p... more In previous reports we described a centro-frontal scalp-recorded event-related potential (ERP), particularly sensitive to human voices. This potential peaked at about 320 ms from stimulus onset and was significantly larger, in nonmusicians, in response to tones sung by human singers as compared to same-pitched tones produced by a variety of musical instruments. This component which seems to be related to the Novelty P3 and P3a components may indicate, as suggested by a number of researchers, an orienting response in which attention exceeds a certain threshold. Given the conditions under which this component was elicited we suggested that the attentional switch was driven by the significance of voice stimuli for human listeners, rather than due to physical novelty. In the current study we attempted to validate this hypothesis by adding two manipulations. First, we added a third group of participants for whom the human voice may be especially significant – professional singers. In add...
Background in music theory. Music theorists and aestheticians have long suggested that musical ge... more Background in music theory. Music theorists and aestheticians have long suggested that musical gestures are isomorphic with expressive motion (e.g., Kurth, 1991; Scruton, 1997). The ramifications of this hypothesis can be observed in attempts to map changes in diverse musical parameters onto curves representing spatial motion (see Shove & Repp, 1995), in analyses of musical processes as sonic embodiments of "image schemas" (e.g., Zbikowski, 2002; Spitzer, 2003), or the proposal that analogies of musical and bodily gestures supply the "iconic" component in music semiotics (e.g., Hatten 2002; Lidov, 1999). Background in music psychology. Various empirical and theoretical studies suggest that the relationship between music and motion is fundamental to music processing. For instance, Sundberg and Verillo (1980) showed that performers' tempo fluctuations, such as the final retard, match the velocity profiles of natural human locomotion. In the realm of perception,...
Journal of vision, Jan 21, 2014
Musicians' perceptual advantage in the acoustic domain is well established. Recent studies sh... more Musicians' perceptual advantage in the acoustic domain is well established. Recent studies show that musicians' verbal working memory is also superior. Additionally, some studies report that musicians' visuospatial skills are enhanced although others failed to find this enhancement. We now examined whether musicians' spatial vision is superior, and if so, whether this superiority reflects refined visual skills or a general superiority of working memory. We examined spatial frequency discrimination among musicians and nonmusician university students using two presentation conditions: simultaneous (spatial forced choice) and sequential (temporal forced choice). Musicians' performance was similar to that of nonmusicians in the simultaneous condition. However, their performance in the sequential condition was superior, suggesting an advantage only when stimuli need to be retained, i.e., working memory. Moreover, the two groups showed a different pattern of correlatio...
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2016
Melody recognition is an online process of evaluating incoming information and comparing this inf... more Melody recognition is an online process of evaluating incoming information and comparing this information to an existing internal corpus, thereby reducing prediction error. The predictive-coding model postulates top-down control on sensory processing accompanying reduction in prediction error. To investigate the relevancy of this model to melody processing, the current study examined early magnetoencephalogram (MEG) auditory responses to familiar and unfamiliar melodies in 25 participants. The familiar melodies followed and primed an octave-scrambled version of the same melody. The retrograde version of theses melodies served as the unfamiliar control condition. Octave-transposed melodies were included to examine the influence of pitch representation (pitch-height/pitch-chroma representation) on brain responses to melody recognition. Results demonstrate a reduction of the M100 auditory response to familiar, as compared with unfamiliar, melodies regardless of their form of presentation (condensed vs. octave-scrambled). This trend appeared to begin after the third tone of the melody. An additional behavioral study with the same melody corpus showed a similar trend—namely, a significant difference between familiarity rating for familiar and unfamiliar melodies, beginning with the third tone of the melody. These results may indicate a top-down inhibition of early auditory responses to melodies that is influenced by pitch representation.
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Papers by Roni Yeger-Granot