Division of Development and Growth, Department of Pediatrics, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
Institute of Bioengineering, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland.
Hum Brain Mapp. 2024 Jul 15;45(10):e26724. doi: 10.1002/hbm.26724.
Music is ubiquitous, both in its instrumental and vocal forms. While speech perception at birth has been at the core of an extensive corpus of research, the origins of the ability to discriminate instrumental or vocal melodies is still not well investigated. In previous studies comparing vocal and musical perception, the vocal stimuli were mainly related to speaking, including language, and not to the non-language singing voice. In the present study, to better compare a melodic instrumental line with the voice, we used singing as a comparison stimulus, to reduce the dissimilarities between the two stimuli as much as possible, separating language perception from vocal musical perception. In the present study, 45 newborns were scanned, 10 full-term born infants and 35 preterm infants at term-equivalent age (mean gestational age at test = 40.17 weeks, SD = 0.44) using functional magnetic resonance imaging while listening to five melodies played by a musical instrument (flute) or sung by a female voice. To examine the dynamic task-based effective connectivity, we employed a psychophysiological interaction of co-activation patterns (PPI-CAPs) analysis, using the auditory cortices as seed region, to investigate moment-to-moment changes in task-driven modulation of cortical activity during an fMRI task. Our findings reveal condition-specific, dynamically occurring patterns of co-activation (PPI-CAPs). During the vocal condition, the auditory cortex co-activates with the sensorimotor and salience networks, while during the instrumental condition, it co-activates with the visual cortex and the superior frontal cortex. Our results show that the vocal stimulus elicits sensorimotor aspects of the auditory perception and is processed as a more salient stimulus while the instrumental condition activated higher-order cognitive and visuo-spatial networks. Common neural signatures for both auditory stimuli were found in the precuneus and posterior cingulate gyrus. Finally, this study adds knowledge on the dynamic brain connectivity underlying the newborns capability of early and specialized auditory processing, highlighting the relevance of dynamic approaches to study brain function in newborn populations.
音乐无处不在，包括器乐和声乐形式。虽然出生时的言语感知一直是大量研究的核心，但辨别器乐或声乐旋律的能力起源仍未得到很好的研究。在之前比较声乐和音乐感知的研究中，声乐刺激主要与言语相关，包括语言，而不是与非语言的歌唱声音相关。在本研究中，为了更好地将旋律乐器与声音进行比较，我们使用歌唱作为比较刺激，以尽可能减少两种刺激之间的差异，将语言感知与声乐音乐感知分开。在本研究中，使用功能磁共振成像技术对 45 名新生儿进行扫描，其中 10 名为足月出生婴儿，35 名为接近足月出生的早产儿（测试时的平均胎龄为 40.17 周，标准差为 0.44），让他们在听五种由乐器（长笛）演奏或女性声音演唱的旋律时进行扫描。为了检查动态基于任务的有效连接，我们采用了共激活模式的心理生理交互（PPI-CAPs）分析，使用听觉皮层作为种子区域，来研究 fMRI 任务中皮质活动的任务驱动调制的瞬间变化。我们的研究结果揭示了特定条件下，动态发生的共激活模式（PPI-CAPs）。在声乐条件下，听觉皮层与感觉运动和突显网络共同激活，而在器乐条件下，它与视觉皮层和额上回共同激活。我们的结果表明，声乐刺激引起听觉感知的感觉运动方面，并且被处理为更显著的刺激，而器乐条件则激活了更高阶的认知和视空间网络。在新皮层和后扣带回中发现了两种听觉刺激的共同神经特征。最后，本研究为新生儿早期和专门的听觉处理能力的大脑连接的动态基础提供了知识，强调了动态方法对研究新生儿群体大脑功能的重要性。
