2024/10/21 by David Ricardo Quiroga‐Martinez, Gemma Fernández‐Rubio, Leonardo Bonetti +4 · 2 voices · 11 citations
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Artificial intelligence #Auditory cortex #Auditory imagery #Auditory perception #Auditory scene analysis #Biology #Cognition #Cognitive psychology #Computer science #Contrast (vision) #Decoding methods #EEG and Brain-Computer Interfaces #Electroencephalography #Magnetoencephalography #Melody #Mental image #Musical #Musical notation #Neural decoding #Neural dynamics and brain function #Neuroscience #Neuroscience and Music Perception #Perception #Psychology #Representation (politics) #Sensory system
paper · doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.3002858
published in PLoS Biology 22(10), e3002858 (Public Library of Science)
openalex publication_date 2024/10/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Vividly imagining a song or a melody is a skill that many people accomplish with relatively little effort. However, we are only beginning to understand how the brain represents, holds, and manipulates these musical "thoughts." Here, we decoded perceived and imagined melodies from magnetoencephalography (MEG) brain data (N = 71) to characterize their neural representation. We found that, during perception, auditory regions represent the sensory properties of individual sounds. In contrast, a widespread network including fronto-parietal cortex, hippocampus, basal nuclei, and sensorimotor regions hold the melody as an abstract unit during both perception and imagination. Furthermore, the mental manipulation of a melody systematically changes its neural representation, reflecting volitional control of auditory images. Our work sheds light on the nature and dynamics of auditory representations, informing future research on neural decoding of auditory imagination.