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Vigl J, Talamini F, Strauss H, Zentner M. Prosodic discrimination skills mediate the association between musical aptitude and vocal emotion recognition ability. Sci Rep 2024; 14:16462. [PMID: 39014043 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-66889-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/22/2023] [Accepted: 07/04/2024] [Indexed: 07/18/2024] Open
Abstract
The current study tested the hypothesis that the association between musical ability and vocal emotion recognition skills is mediated by accuracy in prosody perception. Furthermore, it was investigated whether this association is primarily related to musical expertise, operationalized by long-term engagement in musical activities, or musical aptitude, operationalized by a test of musical perceptual ability. To this end, we conducted three studies: In Study 1 (N = 85) and Study 2 (N = 93), we developed and validated a new instrument for the assessment of prosodic discrimination ability. In Study 3 (N = 136), we examined whether the association between musical ability and vocal emotion recognition was mediated by prosodic discrimination ability. We found evidence for a full mediation, though only in relation to musical aptitude and not in relation to musical expertise. Taken together, these findings suggest that individuals with high musical aptitude have superior prosody perception skills, which in turn contribute to their vocal emotion recognition skills. Importantly, our results suggest that these benefits are not unique to musicians, but extend to non-musicians with high musical aptitude.
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Affiliation(s)
- Julia Vigl
- Department of Psychology, University of Innsbruck, Universitätsstraße 15, 6020, Innsbruck, Austria.
| | - Francesca Talamini
- Department of Psychology, University of Innsbruck, Universitätsstraße 15, 6020, Innsbruck, Austria
| | - Hannah Strauss
- Department of Psychology, University of Innsbruck, Universitätsstraße 15, 6020, Innsbruck, Austria
| | - Marcel Zentner
- Department of Psychology, University of Innsbruck, Universitätsstraße 15, 6020, Innsbruck, Austria
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Nussbaum C, Schirmer A, Schweinberger SR. Musicality - Tuned to the melody of vocal emotions. Br J Psychol 2024; 115:206-225. [PMID: 37851369 DOI: 10.1111/bjop.12684] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/08/2023] [Revised: 09/12/2023] [Accepted: 09/24/2023] [Indexed: 10/19/2023]
Abstract
Musicians outperform non-musicians in vocal emotion perception, likely because of increased sensitivity to acoustic cues, such as fundamental frequency (F0) and timbre. Yet, how musicians make use of these acoustic cues to perceive emotions, and how they might differ from non-musicians, is unclear. To address these points, we created vocal stimuli that conveyed happiness, fear, pleasure or sadness, either in all acoustic cues, or selectively in either F0 or timbre only. We then compared vocal emotion perception performance between professional/semi-professional musicians (N = 39) and non-musicians (N = 38), all socialized in Western music culture. Compared to non-musicians, musicians classified vocal emotions more accurately. This advantage was seen in the full and F0-modulated conditions, but was absent in the timbre-modulated condition indicating that musicians excel at perceiving the melody (F0), but not the timbre of vocal emotions. Further, F0 seemed more important than timbre for the recognition of all emotional categories. Additional exploratory analyses revealed a link between time-varying F0 perception in music and voices that was independent of musical training. Together, these findings suggest that musicians are particularly tuned to the melody of vocal emotions, presumably due to a natural predisposition to exploit melodic patterns.
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Affiliation(s)
- Christine Nussbaum
- Department for General Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany
- Voice Research Unit, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany
| | - Annett Schirmer
- Department for General Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany
- Institute of Psychology, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria
| | - Stefan R Schweinberger
- Department for General Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany
- Voice Research Unit, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany
- Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
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Duville MM, Alonso-Valerdi LM, Ibarra-Zarate DI. Improved emotion differentiation under reduced acoustic variability of speech in autism. BMC Med 2024; 22:121. [PMID: 38486293 PMCID: PMC10941423 DOI: 10.1186/s12916-024-03341-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/13/2023] [Accepted: 03/05/2024] [Indexed: 03/17/2024] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Socio-emotional impairments are among the diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but the actual knowledge has substantiated both altered and intact emotional prosodies recognition. Here, a Bayesian framework of perception is considered suggesting that the oversampling of sensory evidence would impair perception within highly variable environments. However, reliable hierarchical structures for spectral and temporal cues would foster emotion discrimination by autistics. METHODS Event-related spectral perturbations (ERSP) extracted from electroencephalographic (EEG) data indexed the perception of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, neutral, and sadness prosodies while listening to speech uttered by (a) human or (b) synthesized voices characterized by reduced volatility and variability of acoustic environments. The assessment of mechanisms for perception was extended to the visual domain by analyzing the behavioral accuracy within a non-social task in which dynamics of precision weighting between bottom-up evidence and top-down inferences were emphasized. Eighty children (mean 9.7 years old; standard deviation 1.8) volunteered including 40 autistics. The symptomatology was assessed at the time of the study via the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, Second Edition, and parents' responses on the Autism Spectrum Rating Scales. A mixed within-between analysis of variance was conducted to assess the effects of group (autism versus typical development), voice, emotions, and interaction between factors. A Bayesian analysis was implemented to quantify the evidence in favor of the null hypothesis in case of non-significance. Post hoc comparisons were corrected for multiple testing. RESULTS Autistic children presented impaired emotion differentiation while listening to speech uttered by human voices, which was improved when the acoustic volatility and variability of voices were reduced. Divergent neural patterns were observed from neurotypicals to autistics, emphasizing different mechanisms for perception. Accordingly, behavioral measurements on the visual task were consistent with the over-precision ascribed to the environmental variability (sensory processing) that weakened performance. Unlike autistic children, neurotypicals could differentiate emotions induced by all voices. CONCLUSIONS This study outlines behavioral and neurophysiological mechanisms that underpin responses to sensory variability. Neurobiological insights into the processing of emotional prosodies emphasized the potential of acoustically modified emotional prosodies to improve emotion differentiation by autistics. TRIAL REGISTRATION BioMed Central ISRCTN Registry, ISRCTN18117434. Registered on September 20, 2020.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mathilde Marie Duville
- Escuela de Ingeniería y Ciencias, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Ave. Eugenio Garza Sada 2501 Sur, Col: Tecnológico, Monterrey, N.L, 64700, México.
| | - Luz María Alonso-Valerdi
- Escuela de Ingeniería y Ciencias, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Ave. Eugenio Garza Sada 2501 Sur, Col: Tecnológico, Monterrey, N.L, 64700, México
| | - David I Ibarra-Zarate
- Escuela de Ingeniería y Ciencias, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Ave. Eugenio Garza Sada 2501 Sur, Col: Tecnológico, Monterrey, N.L, 64700, México
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Nussbaum C, Schirmer A, Schweinberger SR. Electrophysiological Correlates of Vocal Emotional Processing in Musicians and Non-Musicians. Brain Sci 2023; 13:1563. [PMID: 38002523 PMCID: PMC10670383 DOI: 10.3390/brainsci13111563] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/27/2023] [Revised: 10/31/2023] [Accepted: 11/03/2023] [Indexed: 11/26/2023] Open
Abstract
Musicians outperform non-musicians in vocal emotion recognition, but the underlying mechanisms are still debated. Behavioral measures highlight the importance of auditory sensitivity towards emotional voice cues. However, it remains unclear whether and how this group difference is reflected at the brain level. Here, we compared event-related potentials (ERPs) to acoustically manipulated voices between musicians (n = 39) and non-musicians (n = 39). We used parameter-specific voice morphing to create and present vocal stimuli that conveyed happiness, fear, pleasure, or sadness, either in all acoustic cues or selectively in either pitch contour (F0) or timbre. Although the fronto-central P200 (150-250 ms) and N400 (300-500 ms) components were modulated by pitch and timbre, differences between musicians and non-musicians appeared only for a centro-parietal late positive potential (500-1000 ms). Thus, this study does not support an early auditory specialization in musicians but suggests instead that musicality affects the manner in which listeners use acoustic voice cues during later, controlled aspects of emotion evaluation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Christine Nussbaum
- Department for General Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Friedrich Schiller University, 07743 Jena, Germany;
- Voice Research Unit, Friedrich Schiller University, 07743 Jena, Germany
| | - Annett Schirmer
- Department for General Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Friedrich Schiller University, 07743 Jena, Germany;
- Institute of Psychology, University of Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
| | - Stefan R. Schweinberger
- Department for General Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Friedrich Schiller University, 07743 Jena, Germany;
- Voice Research Unit, Friedrich Schiller University, 07743 Jena, Germany
- Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, 1202 Geneva, Switzerland
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Singing ability is related to vocal emotion recognition: Evidence for shared sensorimotor processing across speech and music. Atten Percept Psychophys 2023; 85:234-243. [PMID: 36380148 DOI: 10.3758/s13414-022-02613-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 11/03/2022] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
The ability to recognize emotion in speech is a critical skill for social communication. Motivated by previous work that has shown that vocal emotion recognition accuracy varies by musical ability, the current study addressed this relationship using a behavioral measure of musical ability (i.e., singing) that relies on the same effector system used for vocal prosody production. In the current study, participants completed a musical production task that involved singing four-note novel melodies. To measure pitch perception, we used a simple pitch discrimination task in which participants indicated whether a target pitch was higher or lower than a comparison pitch. We also used self-report measures to address language and musical background. We report that singing ability, but not self-reported musical experience nor pitch discrimination ability, was a unique predictor of vocal emotion recognition accuracy. These results support a relationship between processes involved in vocal production and vocal perception, and suggest that sensorimotor processing of the vocal system is recruited for processing vocal prosody.
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Raghavendra PA, Hegde S, Philip M, Kesavan M. Music and neuro-cognitive deficits in depression. Front Psychol 2022; 13:959169. [PMID: 35992458 PMCID: PMC9386549 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.959169] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/01/2022] [Accepted: 07/11/2022] [Indexed: 01/16/2023] Open
Abstract
Background Cognitive deficits are one of the core features of major depressive disorder (MDD) that play crucial role in functional recovery. Studies have explored cognitive deficits in MDD, however, given inconsistent results, especially in mild-moderate MDD. Recently, studies have explored music as cognitive ability in various clinical conditions. In MDD, large focus has been on evaluating emotion deficits and just a handful on music cognition. With growing evidence on use of music based intervention to target cognitive deficits, it is imperative to explore nature of music cognitive ability in MDD. Aim To examine musical and neuro-cognitive deficits in patients with mild-moderate MDD. Methods Patients diagnosed with mild or moderate MDD (n = 19) and matched healthy controls (HC) (n = 18) were evaluated on selected tests from NIMHANS Neuropsychological test battery and Montreal battery for evaluation of amusia (MBEA). Results MDD group performed significantly lower than HC on working memory (p = 0.007), verbal learning (p = 0.02) and retention (p = 0.03). Three indices were computed for a comprehensive evaluation. Groups did not differ significantly in any of the indices- focused attention, executive function, learning and memory as well as on music cognition. Focused attention and memory index predicted music cognition in HC and the combined group (MDD + HC) (p < 0.01). Attention alone contributed to 62.1% of variance in music cognition. Similarly, music cognition significantly predicted focused attention (p < 0.01). Conclusion Individuals with mild-moderate MDD show significant deficits in working memory, verbal learning and memory, however, not in music cognition. There exists a significant relationship between music cognition and attention, which could be implicated in use of music interventions to ameliorate cognitive deficits. Limitations of study include small sample size and heterogeneity. Future studies on larger cohort examining musical emotion perception and neurocognition is imperative to have deeper understanding of this debilitating condition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Prathima A. Raghavendra
- Clinical Neuropsychology and Cognitive Neuroscience Centre, Music Cognition Laboratory, Department of Clinical Psychology, National Institute of Mental Health and Neuroscienes (NIMHANS), Bengaluru, India
| | - Shantala Hegde
- Clinical Neuropsychology and Cognitive Neuroscience Centre, Department of Clinical Psychology, Music Cognition Laboratory, Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance CPH - Intermediate Fellow (IA/CPHI/17/1/503348), National Institute of Mental Health and Neuroscienes (NIMHANS), Bengaluru, India
- *Correspondence: Shantala Hegde, ,
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Parameter-Specific Morphing Reveals Contributions of Timbre to the Perception of Vocal Emotions in Cochlear Implant Users. Ear Hear 2022; 43:1178-1188. [PMID: 34999594 PMCID: PMC9197138 DOI: 10.1097/aud.0000000000001181] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
Abstract
Objectives: Research on cochlear implants (CIs) has focused on speech comprehension, with little research on perception of vocal emotions. We compared emotion perception in CI users and normal-hearing (NH) individuals, using parameter-specific voice morphing. Design: Twenty-five CI users and 25 NH individuals (matched for age and gender) performed fearful-angry discriminations on bisyllabic pseudoword stimuli from morph continua across all acoustic parameters (Full), or across selected parameters (F0, Timbre, or Time information), with other parameters set to a noninformative intermediate level. Results: Unsurprisingly, CI users as a group showed lower performance in vocal emotion perception overall. Importantly, while NH individuals used timbre and fundamental frequency (F0) information to equivalent degrees, CI users were far more efficient in using timbre (compared to F0) information for this task. Thus, under the conditions of this task, CIs were inefficient in conveying emotion based on F0 alone. There was enormous variability between CI users, with low performers responding close to guessing level. Echoing previous research, we found that better vocal emotion perception was associated with better quality of life ratings. Conclusions: Some CI users can utilize timbre cues remarkably well when perceiving vocal emotions.
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