bioRxiv Science⌕ Search
Home/Archive/bioRxiv

bioRxiv · 10.1101/2025.03.24.644846

Reduced neural sensitivity to musical tempo despite enhanced neural tracking of musical features in older adults

Ren, Y.·Weineck, K.·Henry, M. J.·Herrmann, B.
View original source ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

A substantial body of prior research has focused on how aging affects the neural processing of speech, whereas less is known about how older adults encode naturalistic music. Here, we investigated whether the neural tracking of different features in naturalistic music differs between age groups. Younger and older adults (both sexes) listened to excerpts of naturalistic music with different tempi (1-4 Hz) while electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. The results show an age-related enhancement of neural responses to sound onsets, suggesting a loss of inhibition in the aged auditory cortex that is thought to arise from peripheral decline. This hyperresponsiveness generalized to the neural tracking of multiple features (amplitude envelope, onsets, beat, and spectral flux) in naturalistic music. Crucially, older adults showed reduced sensitivity of early brain responses (0-130 ms) to tempo: Unlike younger adults, whose neural tracking decreased systematically with increasing tempo, older listeners maintained uniformly enhanced tracking across tempi. Spectral flux best predicted tempo- related changes in EEG activity, but this was reduced in older compared to younger adults. In sum, the current study demonstrates that cortical hyperactivity in aging enhances the tracking of different features during naturalistic music listening but impairs the sensitivity to musical tempo. This dissociation highlights the complex changes and functional consequences of auditory aging related to the processing of naturalistic music. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTHow aging affects the encoding of ecologically-valid, naturalistic music is not well understood, although music is an important part of older peoples lives. Here, we used electroencephalography and temporal response function approaches to investigate how younger and older adults encode different features of naturalistic music at different tempi (1 to 4 Hz). The results reveal a fundamental trade-off in the aging auditory system: enhanced neural tracking of acoustic features coexists with declined sensitivity to musical tempo. This dissociation between hyperactivity for feature encoding and impaired temporal sensitivity highlights complex changes in the aged auditory system that can have implications for music perception in older adulthood.

Explore related subjects

neurosciencePreprint

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Ren, Y., Weineck, K., Henry, M. J., Herrmann, B.. 2025-03-24. Reduced neural sensitivity to musical tempo despite enhanced neural tracking of musical features in older adults. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.03.24.644846

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related preprints

bioRxiv2026

A systems-level model of sleep-dependent memory-consolidation failure in neurodegeneration: the spindle-slow-oscillation decoupling cascade dissociates amyloid and tau

During non-rapid-eye-movement (NREM) sleep, the temporal coupling of cortical slow oscillations (SOs), thalamic spindles, and hippocampal sharp wave ripples drives the consolidation of declarative memories. This coupling degrades in ageing and Alzheimers disease (AD), and although A{beta} and tau leave dissociable signatures in human sleep, the mechanisms by which progressive pathology dismantles the consolidation machinery are difficult to isolate experimentally, and have not to our knowledge been reproduced in a model that can be perturbed directly. We built a systems-level model in which cortical SOs and thalamic spindles are generated by reduced oscillators, hippocampal ripples replay encoded spike sequences, and the measured per-event SO-spindle timing alignment causally gates spike-timing dependent plasticity on cortical sequence synapses. A post-sleep cued-recall test reads out consolidation. Five neurodegeneration parameters (amyloid, tau, synaptic density, GABAergic inhibition, cholinergic tone) map to dis tinct mechanisms grounded in the human and animal literature. The model reproduces graded healthy consolidation and a progressive collapse in which coupling, slow-wave power, spindle power and recall fall monotonically and the overnight memory effect flips from consolidation to net forgetting, with weak memories failing first. Scrambling SO-spindle timing while holding oscillation power fixed abolishes consolidation, establishing that coupling timing, rather than oscillation power, is what the plasticity gate depends on within the model. A{beta} and tau impair memory through orthogonal signatures (A{beta} collapses slow-wave power while sparing replay order, tau the reverse) and this orthogonality holds across the entire A{beta} x tau plane and survives simultaneous {+/-}50% resampling of every mapping coefficient (40/40 samples), so it is not an artefact of a single calibration point. The model yields a falsifiable clinical prediction: closed-loop slow-oscillation enhancement rescues memory only when the deficit is amplitude/coupling-dominated, not when it is replay(tau)-dominated, despite normalising slow-wave power in both cases. Because the therapy arms dissociate coupling from memory benefit, the model also cautions against adopting SO-spindle coupling as a standalone surrogate endpoint.

neuroscience↗
bioRxiv2026

Toxicity of MAPT 4R RNA Contributes to Motor Neuron Degeneration in ALS

MAPT (Tau) dysregulation is implicated in several neurodegenerative diseases, but its contribution to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is poorly understood. Here we show that mRNA isoforms encoding 4-repeat (4R) Tau are upregulated and cytoplasmically enriched in iPSC-derived motor neurons (MNs) from VCP-mutant and sporadic ALS, without a corresponding change in Tau protein. Using splice-switching antisense oligonucleotides and isoform-specific siRNAs, we find that enhanced 4R expression reduces MN viability, whereas its selective knockdown improves survival, with kinetics more consistent with an RNA-intrinsic effect than altered protein synthesis. Exon 10-containing MAPT RNA shows increased predicted secondary structure, self-association and altered Tau biocondensation in vitro. In post-mortem ALS cervical spinal cord, increased relative exon 10 usage is associated with a higher-risk clinical phenotype and shorter disease duration These findings identify an isoform-specific contribution of MAPT to MN vulnerability in ALS and nominate 4R MAPT RNA as a therapeutic target.

neuroscience↗
bioRxiv2026

State dependant modulation of optic flow-processing lobula plate cells in butterflies

Increasing experimental evidence suggests that biological systems cancel predictable components of sensory signals while maintaining sensitivity to externally induced state changes. This strategy provides task-specific sensor responses for posture, locomotion, and gaze control. A prime example is found in interneurons that respond to visual image shifts resulting from the relative motion between an animal's eyes and its visual surroundings. Such optic flow-processing interneurons, found across phyla and are particularly well characterized in Dipteran and other flying insects. We studied optic flow-processing interneurons in the Monarch butterfly whose large and highly contrasted wings sweep through the visual field with every wing-beat cycle, potentially obscuring interneuron output signals. Our results show baseline spiking activity increases when animals flap their wings, and individual spikes are phase-locked to the wing-beat cycle, even in the dark, when no visual motion input is available. A qualitative estimate of the interneurons' response to directional wing motion through its receptive field is not sufficient to explain the recorded activity patterns. Our results suggest that an additional internal signal suppresses responses to wing-induced visual motion to support effective vision-based stabilization reflexes. These findings support the principle that self-generated signals are suppressed while sensitivity to external modulation is preserved.

neuroscience↗