2019/04/25 by Parker Tichko, Edward W. Large · 1 citation
Neuroscience · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #Neural dynamics and brain function #Neuroscience and Music Perception #Animal Vocal Communication and Behavior
paper · doi:10.1111/nyas.14050
openalex publication_date 2019/04/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Previous research suggests that infants' perception of musical rhythm is fine-tuned to culture-specific rhythmic structures over the first postnatal year of human life. To date, however, little is known about the neurobiological principles that may underlie this process. In the current study, we used a dynamical systems model featuring neural oscillation and Hebbian plasticity to simulate infants' perceptual learning of culture-specific musical rhythms. First, we demonstrate that oscillatory activity in an untrained network reflects the rhythmic structure of either a Western or a Balkan training rhythm in a veridical fashion. Next, during a period of unsupervised learning, we show that the network learns the rhythmic structure of either a Western or a Balkan training rhythm through the self-organization of network connections. Finally, we demonstrate that the learned connections affect the networks' response to violations to the metrical structure of native and nonnative rhythms, a pattern of findings that mirrors the behavioral data on infants' perceptual narrowing to musical rhythms.