Narratives imagined in response to instrumental music reveal culture-bounded intersubjectivity.

The scientific literature sometimes considers music an abstract stimulus, devoid of explicit meaning, and at other times considers it a universal language. Here, individuals in three geographically distinct locations spanning two cultures performed a highly unconstrained task: they provided free-response descriptions of stories they imagined while listening to instrumental music. Tools from natural language processing revealed that listeners provide highly similar stories to the same musical excerpts when they share an underlying culture, but when they do not, the generated stories show limited overlap. These results paint a more complex picture of music's power: music can generate remarkably similar stories in listeners' minds, but the degree to which these imagined narratives are shared depends on the degree to which culture is shared across listeners. Thus, music is neither an abstract stimulus nor a universal language but has semantic affordances shaped by culture, requiring more sustained attention from psychology.

Mechanism of Duration Perception in Artificial Brains Suggests New Model of Attentional Entrainment.

While cognitive theory has advanced several candidate frameworks to explain attentional entrainment, the neural basis for the temporal allocation of attention is unknown. Here we present a new model of attentional entrainment guided by empirical evidence obtained using a cohort of 50 artificial brains. These brains were evolved in silico to perform a duration judgment task similar to one where human subjects perform duration judgments in auditory oddball paradigms. We found that the artificial brains display psychometric characteristics remarkably similar to those of human listeners and exhibit similar patterns of distortions of perception when presented with out-of-rhythm oddballs. A detailed analysis of mechanisms behind the duration distortion suggests that attention peaks at the end of the tone, which is inconsistent with previous attentional entrainment models. Instead, the new model of entrainment emphasizes increased attention to those aspects of the stimulus that the brain expects to be highly informative.

Interdependence of movement amplitude and tempo during self-paced finger tapping: evaluation of a preferred velocity hypothesis.

This study examined the relation between movement amplitude and tempo during self-paced rhythmic finger tapping to test a preferred velocity account of the preferred tempo construct. Preferred tempo refers to the concept that individuals have preferences for the pace of actions or events in their environment (e.g., the desired pace of walking or tempo of music). The preferred velocity hypothesis proposes that assessments of preferred tempo do not represent a pure time preference independent of spatial movement characteristics, but rather reflects a preference for an average movement velocity, predicting that preferred tempo will depend on movement amplitude. We tested this by having participants first perform a novel spontaneous motor amplitude (SMA) task in which they repetitively tapped their finger at their preferred amplitude without instructions about tapping tempo. Next, participants completed the spontaneous motor tempo (SMT) task in which they tapped their finger at their preferred tempo without instructions about tapping amplitude. Finally, participants completed a target amplitude version of the SMT task where they tapped at their preferred tempo at three target amplitudes (low, medium, and high). Participants (1) produced similar amplitudes and tempi regardless of instructions to produce either their preferred amplitude or preferred tempo, maintaining the same average movement velocity across SMA and SMT tasks and (2) altered their preferred tempo for different target amplitudes in the direction predicted by their estimated preferred velocity from the SMA and SMT tasks. Overall, results show the interdependence of movement amplitude and tempo in tapping assessments of preferred tempo.

Monkey see, monkey tap: mimicry of movement dynamics during coordinated tapping.

Common social behaviors, such as having a conversation, dancing, or playing a team sport, require precise interpersonal coordination of action. One question that emerges in research on interpersonal coordination is to what extent individuals implicitly mimic the spatial characteristics of movements for tasks that emphasize movement timing. To investigate this question, we conducted two experiments using an interpersonal synchronization-continuation tapping paradigm in which pairs of individuals tapped with their index finger on a table in synchrony with an auditory metronome and then continued tapping at the same tempo when the metronome stopped. Pairs of individuals tapped either together with the instruction to maintain synchrony with each other (interpersonal tapping) or tapped alone (solo tapping). Solo tapping conditions either occurred with their tapping partner present in the testing room (Experiment 1) or absent (Experiment 2). We used motion capture to examine both the spatial and temporal aspects of movement dynamics during task performance. In both experiments, participants implicitly mimicked subtle aspects of spatial elements of their partner's movements. The extent of finger extension (tap amplitude) and, in Experiment 1, duration of finger contact with the surface (dwell time) were correlated between tapping partners when they tapped together. In some cases, this spatial mimicry extended to solo tapping conditions, but only during solo tapping conditions that followed the interpersonal tapping task, and, to a lesser degree, when solo tapping after having observed the other participant solo tapping.

Perceived duration of auditory oddballs: test of a novel pitch-window hypothesis.

Unexpected oddball stimuli embedded within a series of otherwise identical standard stimuli tend to be overestimated in duration. The present study tested a pitch-window explanation of the auditory oddball effect on perceived duration in two experiments. For both experiments, participants listened to isochronous sequences consisting of a series of 400 Hz fixed-duration standard tones with an embedded oddball tone that differed in pitch and judged whether the variable-duration oddball was shorter or longer than the standard. Participants were randomly assigned to either a wide or narrow pitch-window condition, in which an anchor oddball was presented with high likelihood at either a far pitch (850 Hz) or a near pitch (550 Hz), respectively. In both pitch-window conditions, probe oddballs were presented with low likelihood at pitches that were either within or outside the frequency range established by the standard and anchor tones. Identical 700 Hz probe oddballs were perceived to be shorter in duration in the wide pitch-window condition than in the narrow pitch-window condition (Experiments 1 and 2), even when matching the overall frequency range of oddballs across conditions (Experiment 2). Results support the proposed pitch-window hypothesis, but are inconsistent with both enhanced processing and predictive coding accounts of the oddball effect.

Implementation of Early Intervention Protocol in Australia for 'High Risk' Injured Workers is Associated with Fewer Lost Work Days Over 2 Years Than Usual (Stepped) Care.

Purpose To evaluate whether a protocol for early intervention addressing the psychosocial risk factors for delayed return to work in workers with soft tissue injuries would achieve better long-term outcomes than usual (stepped) care. Methods The study used a controlled, non-randomised prospective design to compare two case management approaches. For the intervention condition, workers screened within 1-3 weeks of injury as being at high risk of delayed returned to work by the Örebro Musculoskeletal Pain Screening Questionnaire-short version (ÖMPSQ-SF) were offered psychological assessment and a comprehensive protocol to address the identified obstacles for return to work. Similarly identified injured workers in the control condition were managed under usual (stepped) care arrangements. Results At 2-year follow-up, the mean lost work days for the Intervention group was less than half that of the usual care group, their claim costs were 30% lower, as was the growth trajectory of their costs after 11 months. Conclusions The findings supported the hypothesis that brief psychological risk factor screening, combined with a protocol for active collaboration between key stakeholders to address identified psychological and workplace factors for delayed return to work, can achieve better return on investment than usual (stepped) care.

Introduction of Ebola virus into a remote border district of Sierra Leone, 2014: use of field epidemiology and RNA sequencing to describe chains of transmission.

In early October 2014, 7 months after the 2014-2015 Ebola epidemic in West Africa began, a cluster of reported deaths in Koinadugu, a remote district of Sierra Leone, was the first evidence of Ebola virus disease (Ebola) in the district. Prior to this event, geographic isolation was thought to have prevented the introduction of Ebola to this area. We describe our initial investigation of this cluster of deaths and subsequent public health actions after Ebola was confirmed, and present challenges to our investigation and methods of overcoming them. We present a transmission tree and results of whole genome sequencing of selected isolates to identify the source of infection in Koinadugu and demonstrate transmission between its villages. Koinadugu's experience highlights the danger of assuming that remote location and geographic isolation can prevent the spread of Ebola, but also demonstrates how deployment of rapid field response teams can help limit spread once Ebola is detected.

Correction to: Implementation of Early Intervention Protocol in Australia for 'High Risk' Injured Workers is Associated with Fewer Lost Work Days Over 2 Years Than Usual (Stepped) Care.

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a spelling error in one of the co-authors's names. The family name of the co-author was incorrectly displayed as "James McCauley" instead of "James McAuley. The original article has been corrected.

Statistical context shapes stimulus-specific adaptation in human auditory cortex.

Stimulus-specific adaptation is the phenomenon whereby neural response magnitude decreases with repeated stimulation. Inconsistencies between recent nonhuman animal recordings and computational modeling suggest dynamic influences on stimulus-specific adaptation. The present human electroencephalography (EEG) study investigates the potential role of statistical context in dynamically modulating stimulus-specific adaptation by examining the auditory cortex-generated N1 and P2 components. As in previous studies of stimulus-specific adaptation, listeners were presented with oddball sequences in which the presentation of a repeated tone was infrequently interrupted by rare spectral changes taking on three different magnitudes. Critically, the statistical context varied with respect to the probability of small versus large spectral changes within oddball sequences (half of the time a small change was most probable; in the other half a large change was most probable). We observed larger N1 and P2 amplitudes (i.e., release from adaptation) for all spectral changes in the small-change compared with the large-change statistical context. The increase in response magnitude also held for responses to tones presented with high probability, indicating that statistical adaptation can overrule stimulus probability per se in its influence on neural responses. Computational modeling showed that the degree of coadaptation in auditory cortex changed depending on the statistical context, which in turn affected stimulus-specific adaptation. Thus the present data demonstrate that stimulus-specific adaptation in human auditory cortex critically depends on statistical context. Finally, the present results challenge the implicit assumption of stationarity of neural response magnitudes that governs the practice of isolating established deviant-detection responses such as the mismatch negativity.

Musical rhythm discrimination explains individual differences in grammar skills in children.

This study considered a relation between rhythm perception skills and individual differences in phonological awareness and grammar abilities, which are two language skills crucial for academic achievement. Twenty-five typically developing 6-year-old children were given standardized assessments of rhythm perception, phonological awareness, morpho-syntactic competence, and non-verbal cognitive ability. Rhythm perception accounted for 48% of the variance in morpho-syntactic competence after controlling for non-verbal IQ, socioeconomic status, and prior musical activities. Children with higher phonological awareness scores were better able to discriminate complex rhythms than children with lower scores, but not after controlling for IQ. This study is the first to show a relation between rhythm perception skills and morpho-syntactic production in children with typical language development. These findings extend the literature showing substantial overlap of neurocognitive resources for processing music and language. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: http://youtu.be/_lO692qHDNg.

Long-term temporal tracking of speech rate affects spoken-word recognition.

Humans unconsciously track a wide array of distributional characteristics in their sensory environment. Recent research in spoken-language processing has demonstrated that the speech rate surrounding a target region within an utterance influences which words, and how many words, listeners hear later in that utterance. On the basis of hypotheses that listeners track timing information in speech over long timescales, we investigated the possibility that the perception of words is sensitive to speech rate over such a timescale (e.g., an extended conversation). Results demonstrated that listeners tracked variation in the overall pace of speech over an extended duration (analogous to that of a conversation that listeners might have outside the lab) and that this global speech rate influenced which words listeners reported hearing. The effects of speech rate became stronger over time. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that neural entrainment by speech occurs on multiple timescales, some lasting more than an hour.

Phonetic variation in consonants in infant-directed and adult-directed speech: the case of regressive place assimilation in word-final alveolar stops.

Pronunciation variation is under-studied in infant-directed speech, particularly for consonants. Regressive place assimilation involves a word-final alveolar stop taking the place of articulation of a following word-initial consonant. We investigated pronunciation variation in word-final alveolar stop consonants in storybooks read by forty-eight mothers in adult-directed or infant-directed style to infants aged approximately 0;3, 0;9, 1;1, or 1;8. We focused on phonological environments where regressive place assimilation could occur, i.e., when the stop preceded a word-initial labial or velar consonant. Spectrogram, waveform, and perceptual evidence was used to classify tokens into four pronunciation categories: canonical, assimilated, glottalized, or deleted. Results showed a reliable tendency for canonical variants to occur in infant-directed speech more often than in adult-directed speech. However, the otherwise very similar distributions of variants across addressee and age group suggested that infants largely experience statistical distributions of non-canonical consonantal pronunciation variants that mirror those experienced by adults.

Contribution of speech rhythm to understanding speech in noisy conditions: Further test of a selective entrainment hypothesis.

Previous work by McAuley et al. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 82, 3222-3233, (2020), Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 83, 2229-2240, (2021) showed that disruption of the natural rhythm of target (attended) speech worsens speech recognition in the presence of competing background speech or noise (a target-rhythm effect), while disruption of background speech rhythm improves target recognition (a background-rhythm effect). While these results were interpreted as support for the role of rhythmic regularities in facilitating target-speech recognition amidst competing backgrounds (in line with a selective entrainment hypothesis), questions remain about the factors that contribute to the target-rhythm effect. Experiment 1 ruled out the possibility that the target-rhythm effect relies on a decrease in intelligibility of the rhythm-altered keywords. Sentences from the Coordinate Response Measure (CRM) paradigm were presented with a background of speech-shaped noise, and the rhythm of the initial portion of these target sentences (the target rhythmic context) was altered while critically leaving the target Color and Number keywords intact. Results showed a target-rhythm effect, evidenced by poorer keyword recognition when the target rhythmic context was altered, despite the absence of rhythmic manipulation of the keywords. Experiment 2 examined the influence of the relative onset asynchrony between target and background keywords. Results showed a significant target-rhythm effect that was independent of the effect of target-background keyword onset asynchrony. Experiment 3 provided additional support for the selective entrainment hypothesis by replicating the target-rhythm effect with a set of speech materials that were less rhythmically constrained than the CRM sentences.

Auditory rhythm facilitates perception and action in children at risk for developmental coordination disorder.

Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) is a common neurodevelopmental disorder featuring deficits in motor coordination and motor timing among children. Deficits in rhythmic tracking, including perceptually tracking and synchronizing action with auditory rhythms, have been studied in a wide range of motor disorders, providing a foundation for developing rehabilitation programs incorporating auditory rhythms. We tested whether DCD also features these auditory-motor deficits among 7-10 year-old children. In a speech recognition task with no overt motor component, modulating the speech rhythm interfered more with the performance of children at risk for DCD than typically developing (TD) children. A set of auditory-motor tapping tasks further showed that, although children at risk for DCD performed worse than TD children in general, the presence of an auditory rhythmic cue (isochronous metronome or music) facilitated the temporal consistency of tapping. Finally, accuracy in the recognition of rhythmically modulated speech and tapping consistency correlated with performance on the standardized motor assessment. Together, the results show auditory rhythmic regularity benefits auditory perception and auditory-motor coordination in children at risk for DCD. This provides a foundation for future clinical studies to develop evidence-based interventions involving auditory-motor rhythmic coordination for children with DCD.

Dexamethasone and lenalidomide have distinct functional effects on erythropoiesis.

Corticosteroids and lenalidomide decrease red blood cell transfusion dependence in patients with Diamond-Blackfan anemia (DBA) and myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), respectively. We explored the effects of dexamethasone and lenalidomide, individually and in combination, on the differentiation of primary human bone marrow progenitor cells in vitro. Both agents promote erythropoiesis, increasing the absolute number of erythroid cells produced from normal CD34(+) cells and from CD34(+) cells with the types of ribosome dysfunction found in DBA and del(5q) MDS. However, the drugs had distinct effects on the production of erythroid progenitor colonies; dexamethasone selectively increased the number of burst-forming units-erythroid (BFU-E), whereas lenalidomide specifically increased colony-forming unit-erythroid (CFU-E). Use of the drugs in combination demonstrated that their effects are not redundant. In addition, dexamethasone and lenalidomide induced distinct gene-expression profiles. In coculture experiments, we examined the role of the microenvironment in response to both drugs and found that the presence of macrophages, the central cells in erythroblastic islands, accentuated the effects of both agents. Our findings indicate that dexamethasone and lenalidomide promote different stages of erythropoiesis and support the potential clinical utility of combination therapy for patients with bone marrow failure.

Coordinate loss of a microRNA and protein-coding gene cooperate in the pathogenesis of 5q- syndrome.

Large chromosomal deletions are among the most common molecular abnormalities in cancer, yet the identification of relevant genes has proven difficult. The 5q- syndrome, a subtype of myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), is a chromosomal deletion syndrome characterized by anemia and thrombocytosis. Although we have previously shown that hemizygous loss of RPS14 recapitulates the failed erythroid differentiation seen in 5q- syndrome, it does not affect thrombocytosis. Here we show that a microRNA located in the common deletion region of 5q- syndrome, miR-145, affects megakaryocyte and erythroid differentiation. We find that miR-145 functions through repression of Fli-1, a megakaryocyte and erythroid regulatory transcription factor. Patients with del(5q) MDS have decreased expression of miR-145 and increased expression of Fli-1. Overexpression of miR-145 or inhibition of Fli-1 decreases the production of megakaryocytic cells relative to erythroid cells, whereas inhibition of miR-145 or overexpression of Fli-1 has a reciprocal effect. Moreover, combined loss of miR-145 and RPS14 cooperates to alter erythroid-megakaryocytic differentiation in a manner similar to the 5q- syndrome. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that coordinate deletion of a miRNA and a protein-coding gene contributes to the phenotype of a human malignancy, the 5q- syndrome.

When what you hear influences when you see: listening to an auditory rhythm influences the temporal allocation of visual attention.

The three experiments reported here demonstrated a cross-modal influence of an auditory rhythm on the temporal allocation of visual attention. In Experiment 1, participants moved their eyes to a test dot with a temporal onset that was either synchronous or asynchronous with a preceding auditory rhythm. Saccadic latencies were faster for the synchronous condition than for the asynchronous conditions. In Experiment 2, the effect was replicated in a condition in which the auditory context stopped prior to the onset of the test dot, and the effect did not occur in a condition in which auditory tones were presented at irregular intervals. Experiment 3 replicated the effect using an accuracy measure within a nontimed visual task. Together, the experiments' findings support a general entrainment perspective on attention to events over time.

Differential sensitivity to speech rhythms in young and older adults.

Sensitivity to the temporal properties of auditory patterns tends to be poorer in older listeners, and this has been hypothesized to be one factor contributing to their poorer speech understanding. This study examined sensitivity to speech rhythms in young and older normal-hearing subjects, using a task designed to measure the effect of speech rhythmic context on the detection of changes in the timing of word onsets in spoken sentences. A temporal-shift detection paradigm was used in which listeners were presented with an intact sentence followed by two versions of the sentence in which a portion of speech was replaced with a silent gap: one with correct gap timing (the same duration as the missing speech) and one with altered gap timing (shorter or longer than the duration of the missing speech), resulting in an early or late resumption of the sentence after the gap. The sentences were presented with either an intact rhythm or an altered rhythm preceding the silent gap. Listeners judged which sentence had the altered gap timing, and thresholds for the detection of deviations from the correct timing were calculated separately for shortened and lengthened gaps. Both young and older listeners demonstrated lower thresholds in the intact rhythm condition than in the altered rhythm conditions. However, shortened gaps led to lower thresholds than lengthened gaps for the young listeners, while older listeners were not sensitive to the direction of the change in timing. These results show that both young and older listeners rely on speech rhythms to generate temporal expectancies for upcoming speech events. However, the absence of lower thresholds for shortened gaps among the older listeners indicates a change in speech-timing expectancies with age. A further examination of individual differences within the older group revealed that those with better rhythm-discrimination abilities (from a separate study) tended to show the same heightened sensitivity to early events observed with the young listeners.

The effect of rhythm on selective listening in multiple-source environments for young and older adults.

Understanding continuous speech with competing background sounds is challenging, particularly for older adults. One stimulus property that may aid listeners understanding of to-be-attended (target) material is temporal regularity (rhythm). In the context of speech-in-noise understanding, McAuley and colleagues recently showed a target rhythm effect whereby recognition of target speech was better when natural speech rhythm of a target talker was intact than when it was temporally altered. The current study replicates the target rhythm effect using a synthetic vowel sequence paradigm in young adults (Experiment 1) and then uses this paradigm to investigate potential age-related changes in the effect of rhythm on recognition (Experiment 2). Listeners identified the last three vowels of temporally regular (isochronous) and irregular (anisochronous) synthetic vowel sequences in quiet and with a competing background sequence of vowel-like harmonic tone complexes presented at various tempos. The results replicated the target rhythm effect whereby temporal regularity in the vowel sequences improved identification accuracy of young listeners compared to irregular vowel sequences. The magnitude of the effect was not found to be influenced by background tempo, but faster background tempos led to greater vowel identification accuracy independent of regularity. Older listeners also demonstrated a target rhythm effect but received less benefit from the temporal regularity of the target sequences than did young listeners. This study highlights the importance of rhythm for understanding age-related differences in selective listening in complex environments and provides a novel paradigm for investigating effects of rhythm on perception.