Biology subjects

Leipold, S.

Publications and source records attributed to Leipold, S..

6 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2024

Between-movie variability severely limits generalizability of "naturalistic" neuroimaging

Movie-watching fMRI has become increasingly popular in neuroscience. Movie-fMRI data are commonly analyzed using inter-subject correlation (ISC), which quantifies the similarity of neural time series across individuals. Differences in ISC during movie viewing have been associated with psychological traits and clinical diagnoses. However, most studies investigating group differences in ISC or ISC-behavior associations have drawn conclusions from a single movie. Because ISC is inherently stimulus-driven, effects observed for one movie may not generalize to another. Yet, the extent to which ISC patterns and ISC-behavior associations depend on the specific movie being viewed has received limited systematic attention. Here, we analyzed three independent datasets comprising 318 subjects and 36 movies in total to quantify between-movie variability in ISC and assess its consequences for ISC-behavior associations. Across datasets, ISC varied between movies throughout the cortex. This variability was spatially heterogeneous: regions with stronger ISC showed greater between-movie variability. Movie-specific inter-subject representational similarity analysis revealed distinct spatial distributions of ISC-behavior associations, with limited overlap between movies. This pattern was observed for two distinct behavioral constructs. These findings suggest that ISC-behavior associations can be strongly movie-specific.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2020

Musical expertise shapes functional and structural brain networks independent of absolute pitch ability

Professional musicians are a popular model for investigating experience-dependent plasticity in human large-scale brain networks. A minority of musicians possess absolute pitch, the ability to name a tone without reference. The study of absolute pitch musicians provides insights into how a very specific talent is reflected in brain networks. Previous studies of the effects of musicianship and absolute pitch on large-scale brain networks have yielded highly heterogeneous findings regarding the localization and direction of the effects. This heterogeneity was likely influenced by small samples and vastly different methodological approaches. Here, we conducted a comprehensive multimodal assessment of effects of musicianship and absolute pitch on intrinsic functional and structural connectivity using a variety of commonly employed and state-of-the-art multivariate methods in the largest sample to date (n = 153 female and male human participants; 52 absolute pitch musicians, 51 non-absolute pitch musicians, and 50 non-musicians). Our results show robust effects of musicianship in inter- and intrahemispheric connectivity in both structural and functional networks. Crucially, most of the effects were replicable in both musicians with and without absolute pitch when compared to non-musicians. However, we did not find evidence for an effect of absolute pitch on intrinsic functional or structural connectivity in our data: The two musician groups showed strikingly similar networks across all analyses. Our results suggest that long-term musical training is associated with robust changes in large-scale brain networks. The effects of absolute pitch on neural networks might be subtle, requiring very large samples or task-based experiments to be detected. Significance StatementA question that has fascinated neuroscientists, psychologists, and musicologists for a long time is how musicianship and absolute pitch, the rare talent to name a tone without reference, are reflected in large-scale networks of the human brain. Much is still unknown as previous studies have reported widely inconsistent results based on small samples. Here, we investigate the largest sample of musicians and non-musicians to date (n = 153) using a multitude of established and novel analysis methods. Results provide evidence for robust effects of musicianship on functional and structural networks that were replicable in two separate groups of musicians and independent of absolute pitch ability.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2020

Heterogeneity of EEG resting-state brain networks in absolute pitch

The neural basis of absolute pitch (AP), the ability to effortlessly identify a musical tone without an external reference, is poorly understood. One of the key questions is whether perceptual or cognitive processes underlie the phenomenon as both sensory and higher-order brain regions have been associated with AP. One approach to elucidate the neural underpinnings of a specific expertise is the examination of resting-state networks. Thus, in this paper, we report a comprehensive functional network analysis of intracranial resting-state EEG data in a large sample of AP musicians (n = 54) and non-AP musicians (n = 51). We adopted two analysis approaches: First, we applied an ROI-based analysis to examine the connectivity between the auditory cortex and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) using several established functional connectivity measures. This analysis is a replication of a previous study which reported increased connectivity between these two regions in AP musicians. Second, we performed a whole-brain network-based analysis on the same functional connectivity measures to gain a more complete picture of the brain regions involved in a possibly large-scale network supporting AP ability. In our sample, the ROI-based analysis did not provide evidence for an AP-specific connectivity increase between the auditory cortex and the DLPFC. In contrast, the whole-brain analysis revealed three networks with increased connectivity in AP musicians comprising nodes in frontal, temporal, subcortical, and occipital areas. Commonalities of the networks were found in both sensory and higher-order brain regions of the perisylvian area. Further research will be needed to confirm these exploratory results.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

Neural patterns reveal single-trial information on absolute pitch and relative pitch perception

Pitch is a fundamental attribute of sounds and yet is not perceived equally by all humans. Absolute pitch (AP) musicians perceive, recognize, and name pitches in absolute terms, whereas relative pitch (RP) musicians, representing the large majority of musicians, perceive pitches in relation to other pitches. In this study, we used electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate the neural representations underlying tone listening and tone labeling in a large sample of musicians (n = 105). Participants performed a pitch processing task with a listening and a labeling condition during EEG acquisition. Using a brain-decoding framework, we tested a prediction derived from both theoretical and empirical accounts of AP, namely that the representational similarity of listening and labeling is higher in AP musicians than in RP musicians. Consistent with the prediction, time-resolved single-trial EEG decoding revealed a higher representational similarity in AP musicians during late stages of pitch perception. Time-frequency-resolved EEG decoding further showed that the higher representational similarity was present in oscillations in the theta and beta frequency bands. Supplemental univariate analyses were less sensitive in detecting subtle group differences in the frequency domain. Taken together, the results suggest differences between AP and RP musicians in late pitch processing stages associated with cognition, rather than in early processing stages associated with perception.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

Absolute and relative pitch processing in the human brain: Neural and behavioral evidence

Pitch is a primary perceptual dimension of sounds and is crucial in music and speech perception. When listening to melodies, most humans encode the relations between pitches into memory using an ability called relative pitch (RP). A small subpopulation, almost exclusively musicians, preferentially encode pitches using absolute pitch (AP): the ability to identify the pitch of a sound without an external reference. In this study, we recruited a large sample of musicians with AP (AP musicians) and without AP (RP musicians). The participants performed a pitch-processing task with a Listening and a Labeling condition during functional magnetic resonance imaging. General linear model analysis revealed that while labeling tones, AP musicians showed lower blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal in the inferior frontal gyrus and the presupplementary motor area -- brain regions associated with working memory, language functions, and auditory imagery. At the same time, AP musicians labeled tones more accurately suggesting that AP might be an example of neural efficiency. In addition, using multivariate pattern analysis, we found that BOLD signal patterns in the inferior frontal gyrus and the presupplementary motor area differentiated between the groups. These clusters were similar, but not identical compared to the general linear model-based clusters. Therefore, information about AP and RP might be present on different spatial scales. While listening to tones, AP musicians showed increased BOLD signal in the right planum temporale which may reflect the matching of pitch information with internal templates and corroborates the importance of the planum temporale in AP processing.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2018

A reevaluation of the electrophysiological correlates of absolute pitch and relative pitch: No evidence for an absolute pitch-specific negativity.

Musicians with absolute pitch effortlessly identify the pitch of a sound without an external reference. Previous neuroscientific studies on absolute pitch have typically had small samples sizes and low statistical power, making them susceptible for false positive findings. In a seminal study, Itoh et al. (2005) reported the elicitation of an absolute pitch-specific event-related potential component during tone listening -- the AP negativity. Additionally, they identified several components as correlates of relative pitch, the ability to identify relations between pitches. Here, we attempted to replicate the main findings of Itoh et al.s study in a large sample of musicians (n = 104) using both frequentist and Bayesian inference. We were not able to replicate the presence of an AP negativity during tone listening in individuals with high levels of absolute pitch, but we partially replicated the findings concerning the correlates of relative pitch. Our results are consistent with several previous studies reporting an absence of differences between musicians with and without absolute pitch in early auditory evoked potential components. We conclude that replication studies form a crucial part in assessing extraordinary findings, even more so in small fields where a single finding can have a large impact on further research.

neuroscience↗