Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, United Kingdom.
Cortex. 2013 Sep;49(8):2186-200. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2012.08.024. Epub 2012 Sep 20.
Current behavioural and electrophysiological evidence suggests that music and language syntactic processing depends on at least partly shared neural resources. Existing studies using a simultaneous presentation paradigm are limited to the effects of violations of harmonic structure in Western tonal music on processing of single syntactic or semantic violations. Because melody is a universal property of music as it is emphasized also by non-western musical traditions, it is fundamental to investigate interactions between melodic expectation and language processing. The present study investigates the effect of melodically unexpected notes on neural responses elicited by linguistic violations. Sentences with or without a violation in the last word were presented on screen simultaneously with melodies whose last note had a high- or low-probability, as estimated by a computational model of melodic expectation. Violations in language could be syntactic, semantic or combined. The electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded while participants occasionally responded to language stimuli. Confirming previous studies, low-probability notes elicited an enhanced N1 compared to high-probability notes. Further, syntactic violations elicited a left anterior negativity (LAN) and P600 component, and semantic violations elicited an N400. Combined violations elicited components which resembled neural responses to both syntactic and semantic incongruities. The LAN amplitude was decreased when language syntactic violations were presented simultaneously with low-probability notes compared to when they were presented with high-probability notes. The N400 was not influenced by the note-probability. These findings show support for the neural interaction between language and music processing, including novel evidence for melodic processing which can be incorporated in a computational framework of melodic expectation.
目前的行为和电生理证据表明,音乐和语言句法处理至少部分依赖于共享的神经资源。现有的使用同时呈现范式的研究仅限于研究西方调性音乐中和声结构的违反对单一句法或语义违反处理的影响。由于旋律是音乐的普遍特征,即使是非西方音乐传统也强调了这一点,因此研究旋律期望与语言处理之间的相互作用是至关重要的。本研究调查了不和谐音符对语言违规引发的神经反应的影响。在屏幕上同时呈现最后一个单词有或没有违规的句子,同时呈现旋律,旋律的最后一个音符的概率高或低,这是通过旋律期望的计算模型来估计的。语言中的违规可以是句法的、语义的或组合的。当参与者偶尔对语言刺激做出反应时,记录脑电图(EEG)。与之前的研究一致,低概率音符比高概率音符引发更强的 N1。此外,句法违规引发左前负向(LAN)和 P600 成分,语义违规引发 N400。组合违规引发的成分类似于对句法和语义不一致的神经反应。当语言句法违规与低概率音符同时呈现时,LAN 振幅比与高概率音符同时呈现时降低。N400 不受音符概率的影响。这些发现支持语言和音乐处理之间的神经相互作用,包括对旋律处理的新证据,这可以被纳入旋律期望的计算框架中。