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Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CAASD (Cracking the Pitch Code in Music and Language: Insights from Congenital Amusia and Autism Spectrum Disorders)

Teaser

Music and language are fundamental traits of human existence. Although music perception and language acquisition start from infancy and seem effortless for the majority of the general population, these abilities can be selectively impaired in individuals with congenital amusia...

Summary

Music and language are fundamental traits of human existence. Although music perception and language acquisition start from infancy and seem effortless for the majority of the general population, these abilities can be selectively impaired in individuals with congenital amusia (CA) and autism spectrum disorders (ASD). To date, it remains unclear why individuals with CA and ASD exhibit significant differences in music, speech, and emotion processing. Taking advantage of recent methodological and theoretical advances in research on music, language and the brain, the CAASD project (ERC-StG-2015, 678733, 2016-2021) aims to carry out a programme of research to explicate the impacts of cognitive processing styles, pitch processing skills, and language background (tone vs. non-tonal) on the behavioural and neurophysiological characteristics of music, language, and emotion processing in CA and ASD.

In particular, under our Delicate Form-Function Balance Hypothesis, we will conduct a series of behavioural and neurophysiological experiments to test the central hypothesis that normal linguistic, musical, and emotional functioning requires a delicate balance in the encoding and decoding of form and function in speech, musical, and emotional communication, with musical communication centred on form and linguistic and emotional communication focused on function. The following three specific aims will be addressed:

Aim 1: To elucidate the differences in speech, music, and emotional processing in CA and ASD, and how and to what extent pitch processing and cognitive abilities impact these differences.
Aim 2: To pinpoint the neurophysiological origins of speech and musical processing deficits in CA and ASD.
Aim 3: To determine the impact of language background (Mandarin versus English) on communicative abilities of ASD individuals.

Ultimately, we aim to construct a unified account of pitch processing in music and language that will not only help reveal the underlying causes for speech, music, and emotional processing deficits in CA and ASD, but also form a laboratory for testing key hypotheses about the bio-behavioural manifestations of human neurodevelopmental disorders in music and language.

Work performed

During the first half of the CAASD project, we have made substantial progress in all three work packages and have achieved all the main targets and objectives within the planned time frame. To date, we have collected data from a total of 192 English-speaking participants in the UK, 143 Mandarin-speaking participants in China, and 39 Cantonese-speaking participants in Hong Kong with or without CA or ASD.

Over the past 32 months, we have published six articles in high-impact scientific journals such as Brain and Cognition, Psychophysiology, Behavioural Brain Research, Neuropsychologia, and Scientific Reports. We have also submitted another manuscript for peer-review and are currently analysing data and preparing 12 papers for submission. Members of the research team have also given 12 presentations at national and international academic workshops and conferences, in addition to delivering seven public engagement lectures. The CAASD research team will also attend the annual Royal County of Berkshire Show (https://www.reading.ac.uk/internal/staffportal/news/articles/spsn-804710.aspx) on 21-22 September 2019 to showcase our research on music, language and the brain, where we expect to reach approximately 6000 visitors from the general public.

Over the course of the project, the CAASD lab has employed around 20 undergraduate students, with the core research team consisting of three postdoctoral researchers and three PhD students from various disciplines such as phonetics, linguistics, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience and with experiences in behavioural, eye-tracking, EEG, and neuroimaging methods. We have also been collaborating with researchers from China, Hong Kong, France, Australia, the US, and the UK, taking advantage of the most recent advances and techniques in research on music, language and the brain.

Final results

Taking an interdisciplinary, multimethodological and integrated approach, the CAASD project will shed light into various cognitive, neural, and emotional processes in music and language, which will create new possibilities for studying the links between the brain and behavior, music and language disorders, Western and Chinese populations, and theoretical and practical implications.

In particular, we have been using a wide range of state-of-the-art experimental paradigms in our behavioural and EEG studies, e.g., cross-modal affective priming, semantic priming, speech/song production and perception, category learning, pitch thresholds using adaptive tracking, etc. Apart from our existing expertise, we are also employing the emerging cutting-edge techniques and paradigms to address our own research questions based on the most recent research advances. For example, we have been using psychophysical reverse correlation combined with voice transformation algorithms (Ponsot et al., 2018) to explore the mental representation of pitch in music and language in CA and ASD. In addition, we have also designed a novel experiment to study prediction in music and language using cloze probabilities in sentences and melodies (Fogel et al., 2015). Furthermore, we will take advantage of the recent advances in EEG research (Crosse et al., 2016; Etard et al., 2019; Song & Iverson, 2018) and implement a novel strategy to explore cortical and subcortical responses to continuous speech/music in our EEG studies.

Thus, using CA and ASD as a theoretical and experimental challenge, we are determined to take the research on music and language processing beyond the status quo by producing a variety of empirical data (acoustic spoken/sung data, perceptual measures, and brain waves) and uncovering the underlying mechanisms of the human music and language cognition.

Website & more info

More info: https://research.reading.ac.uk/caasd-project/.