Enhanced Memory for Vocal Melodies in Autism Spectrum Disorder and Williams Syndrome.

Adults and children with typical development (TD) remember vocal melodies (without lyrics) better than instrumental melodies, which is attributed to the biological and social significance of human vocalizations. Here we asked whether children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), who have persistent difficulties with communication and social interaction, and adolescents and adults with Williams syndrome (WS), who are highly sociable, even indiscriminately friendly, exhibit a memory advantage for vocal melodies like that observed in individuals with TD. We tested 26 children with ASD, 26 adolescents and adults with WS of similar mental age, and 26 children with TD on their memory for vocal and instrumental (piano, marimba) melodies. After exposing them to 12 unfamiliar folk melodies with different timbres, we required them to indicate whether each of 24 melodies (half heard previously) was old (heard before) or new (not heard before) during an unexpected recognition test. Although the groups successfully distinguished the old from the new melodies, they differed in overall memory. Nevertheless, they exhibited a comparable advantage for vocal melodies. In short, individuals with ASD and WS show enhanced processing of socially significant auditory signals in the context of music. LAY SUMMARY: Typically developing children and adults remember vocal melodies better than instrumental melodies. In this study, we found that children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder, who have severe social processing deficits, and children and adults with Williams syndrome, who are highly sociable, exhibit comparable memory advantages for vocal melodies. The results have implications for musical interventions with these populations.

Unisensory and multisensory temporal processing in autism and dyslexia: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

This study presents a comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis of temporal processing in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and developmental dyslexia (DD), two neurodevelopmental disorders in which temporal processing deficits have been highly researched. The results provide strong evidence for impairments in temporal processing in both ASD (g = 0.48) and DD (g = 0.82), as measured by judgments of temporal order and simultaneity. In individual analyses, multisensory temporal processing was impaired for both ASD and DD, and unisensory auditory, visual and tactile processing were all impaired in DD. In ASD, speech stimuli showed moderate impairment effect sizes, whereas nonspeech stimuli showed small effects. Greater reading and spelling skills in DD were associated with greater temporal precision. Temporal deficits did not show changes with age in either disorder. In addition to more clearly defining temporal impairments in ASD and DD, the results highlight common and distinct patterns of temporal processing between these disorders. Deficits are discussed in relation to existing theoretical models, and recommendations are made for future research.

The descending motor tracts are different in dancers and musicians.

Long-term motor training, such as dance or gymnastics, has been associated with increased diffusivity and reduced fiber coherence in regions including the corticospinal tract. Comparisons between different types of motor experts suggest that experience might result in specific structural changes related to the trained effectors (e.g., hands or feet). However, previous studies have not segregated the descending motor pathways from different body-part representations in motor cortex (M1). Further, most previous diffusion tensor imaging studies used whole-brain analyses based on a single tensor, which provide poor information about regions where multiple white matter (WM) tracts cross. Here, we used multi-tensor probabilistic tractography to investigate the specific components of the descending motor pathways in well-matched groups of dancers, musicians and controls. To this aim, we developed a procedure to identify the WM regions below the motor representations of the head, hand, trunk and leg that served as seeds for tractography. Dancers showed increased radial diffusivity (RD) in comparison with musicians, in descending motor pathways from all the regions, particularly in the right hemisphere, whereas musicians had increased fractional anisotropy (FA) in the hand and the trunk/arm motor tracts. Further, dancers showed larger volumes compared to both other groups. Finally, we found negative correlations between RD and FA with the age of start of dance or music training, respectively, and between RD and performance on a melody task, and positive correlations between RD and volume with performance on a whole-body dance task. These findings suggest that different types of training might have different effects on brain structure, likely because dancers must coordinate movements of the entire body, whereas musicians focus on fewer effectors.

Pitch direction ability predicts melodic perception in autism.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) often present atypical auditory perception. Previous work has reported both enhanced low-level pitch discrimination and superior abilities to detect local pitch structure on higher-level melodic tasks in ASD. However, it is unclear how low and high levels of auditory perception are related in ASD or typical development (TD), or how this relationship might change across development and stimulus presentation rates. To these aims, in the present study, children with ASD and TD were tested on a low-level pitch direction discrimination task and a high-level melodic global-local task. Groups performed similarly on both of these auditory tasks. Moreover, individual differences in low-level pitch direction ability predicted performance on the higher-level global-local task, with a stronger relationship in ASD. Age did not affect the relationship between low-level and high-level pitch performance in either ASD or TD. However, there was a more positive effect of age on the high-level global-local task performance in TD than ASD. Finally, there was no effect of stimulus rate on the relationship between low-level and high-level pitch performance in either group. These findings provide a better understanding of how perception is associated across levels of processing in ASD versus TD. This work helps to better understand individual differences in auditory perception and to refine ASD phenotypes.

Structural Covariance Analysis Reveals Differences Between Dancers and Untrained Controls.

Dancers and musicians differ in brain structure from untrained individuals. Structural covariance (SC) analysis can provide further insight into training-associated brain plasticity by evaluating interregional relationships in gray matter (GM) structure. The objectives of the present study were to compare SC of cortical thickness (CT) between expert dancers, expert musicians and untrained controls, as well as to examine the relationship between SC and performance on dance- and music-related tasks. A reduced correlation between CT in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and mean CT across the whole brain was found in the dancers compared to the controls, and a reduced correlation between these two CT measures was associated with higher performance on a dance video game task. This suggests that the left DLPFC is structurally decoupled in dancers and may be more strongly affected by local training-related factors than global factors in this group. This work provides a better understanding of structural brain connectivity and training-induced brain plasticity, as well as their interaction with behavior in dance and music.

Pitch and Time Processing in Speech and Tones: The Effects of Musical Training and Attention.

Purpose: Musical training is often linked to enhanced auditory discrimination, but the relative roles of pitch and time in music and speech are unclear. Moreover, it is unclear whether pitch and time processing are correlated across individuals and how they may be affected by attention. This study aimed to examine pitch and time processing in speech and tone sequences, taking musical training and attention into account. Method: Musicians (16) and nonmusicians (16) were asked to detect pitch or timing changes in speech and tone sequences and make a binary response. In some conditions, the participants were focused on 1 aspect of the stimulus (directed attention), and in others, they had to pay attention to all aspects at once (divided attention). Results: As expected, musicians performed better overall. Performance scores on pitch and time tasks were correlated, as were performance scores for speech and tonal stimuli, but most markedly in musicians. All participants performed better on the directed versus divided attention task, but again, musicians performed better than nonmusicians. Conclusion: In general, this experiment shows that individuals with a better sense of pitch discrimination also have a better sense of timing discrimination in the auditory domain. In addition, although musicians perform better overall, these results do not support the idea that musicians have an added advantage for divided attention tasks. These findings serve to better understand how musical training and attention affect pitch and time processing in the context of speech and tones and may have applications in special populations. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.5895997.

Speech perception in autism spectrum disorder: An activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is often characterized by atypical language profiles and auditory and speech processing. These can contribute to aberrant language and social communication skills in ASD. The study of the neural basis of speech perception in ASD can serve as a potential neurobiological marker of ASD early on, but mixed results across studies renders it difficult to find a reliable neural characterization of speech processing in ASD. To this aim, the present study examined the functional neural basis of speech perception in ASD versus typical development (TD) using an activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis of 18 qualifying studies. The present study included separate analyses for TD and ASD, which allowed us to examine patterns of within-group brain activation as well as both common and distinct patterns of brain activation across the ASD and TD groups. Overall, ASD and TD showed mostly common brain activation of speech processing in bilateral superior temporal gyrus (STG) and left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). However, the results revealed trends for some distinct activation in the TD group showing additional activation in higher-order brain areas including left superior frontal gyrus (SFG), left medial frontal gyrus (MFG), and right IFG. These results provide a more reliable neural characterization of speech processing in ASD relative to previous single neuroimaging studies and motivate future work to investigate how these brain signatures relate to behavioral measures of speech processing in ASD.

Auditory Pitch Perception in Autism Spectrum Disorder Is Associated With Nonverbal Abilities.

Atypical sensory perception and heterogeneous cognitive profiles are common features of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, previous findings on auditory sensory processing in ASD are mixed. Accordingly, auditory perception and its relation to cognitive abilities in ASD remain poorly understood. Here, children with ASD, and age- and intelligence quotient (IQ)-matched typically developing children, were tested on a low- and a higher level pitch processing task. Verbal and nonverbal cognitive abilities were measured using the Wechsler's Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence. There were no group differences in performance on either auditory task or IQ measure. However, there was significant variability in performance on the auditory tasks in both groups that was predicted by nonverbal, not verbal skills. These results suggest that auditory perception is related to nonverbal reasoning rather than verbal abilities in ASD and typically developing children. In addition, these findings provide evidence for preserved pitch processing in school-age children with ASD with average IQ, supporting the idea that there may be a subgroup of individuals with ASD that do not present perceptual or cognitive difficulties. Future directions involve examining whether similar perceptual-cognitive relationships might be observed in a broader sample of individuals with ASD, such as those with language impairment or lower IQ.

Dance and music share gray matter structural correlates.

Intensive practise of sensorimotor skills, such as music and dance, is associated with brain structural plasticity. While the neural correlates of music have been well-investigated, less is known about the neural correlates of dance. Additionally, the gray matter structural correlates of dance versus music training have not yet been directly compared. The objectives of the present study were to compare gray matter structure as measured by surface- and voxel-based morphometry between expert dancers, expert musicians and untrained controls, as well as to correlate gray matter structure with performance on dance- and music-related tasks. Dancers and musicians were found to have increased cortical thickness compared to controls in superior temporal regions. Gray matter structure in the superior temporal gyrus was also correlated with performance on dance imitation, rhythm synchronization and melody discrimination tasks. These results suggest that superior temporal regions are important in both dance- and music-related skills and may be affected similarly by both types of long-term intensive training. This work advances knowledge of the neural correlates of dance and music, as well as training-associated brain plasticity in general.

Language Ability Predicts Cortical Structure and Covariance in Boys with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

There is significant clinical heterogeneity in language and communication abilities of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). However, no consistent pathology regarding the relationship of these abilities to brain structure has emerged. Recent developments in anatomical correlation-based approaches to map structural covariance networks (SCNs), combined with detailed behavioral characterization, offer an alternative for studying these relationships. In this study, such an approach was used to study the integrity of SCNs of cortical thickness and surface area associated with language and communication, in 46 high-functioning, school-age children with ASD compared with 50 matched, typically developing controls (all males) with IQ > 75. Findings showed that there was alteration of cortical structure and disruption of fronto-temporal cortical covariance in ASD compared with controls. Furthermore, in an analysis of a subset of ASD participants, alterations in both cortical structure and covariance were modulated by structural language ability of the participants, but not communicative function. These findings indicate that structural language abilities are related to altered fronto-temporal cortical covariance in ASD, much more than symptom severity or cognitive ability. They also support the importance of better characterizing ASD samples while studying brain structure and for better understanding individual differences in language and communication abilities in ASD.

Effects of Age and Attention on Auditory Global-Local Processing in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

In vision, typically-developing (TD) individuals perceive "global" (whole) before "local" (detailed) features, whereas individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit a local bias. However, auditory global-local distinctions are less clear in ASD, particularly in terms of age and attention effects. To these aims, here ASD and TD children judged local and global pitch structure in nine-tone melodies. Both groups showed a similar global precedence effect, but ASD children were less sensitive to global interference than TD children at younger ages. There was no effect of attention task. These findings provide novel evidence of developmental differences in auditory perception and may help to refine sensory phenotypes in ASD.

Sensorimotor integration is enhanced in dancers and musicians.

Studying individuals with specialized training, such as dancers and musicians, provides an opportunity to investigate how intensive practice of sensorimotor skills affects behavioural performance across various domains. While several studies have found that musicians have improved motor, perceptual and sensorimotor integration skills compared to untrained controls, fewer studies have examined the effect of dance training on such skills. Moreover, no study has specifically compared the effects of dance versus music training on perceptual or sensorimotor performance. To this aim, in the present study, expert dancers, expert musicians and untrained controls were tested on a range of perceptual and sensorimotor tasks designed to discriminate performance profiles across groups. Dancers performed better than musicians and controls on a dance imitation task (involving whole-body movement), but musicians performed better than dancers and controls on a musical melody discrimination task as well as on a rhythm synchronization task (involving finger tapping). These results indicate that long-term intensive dance and music training are associated with distinct enhancements in sensorimotor skills. This novel work advances knowledge of the effects of long-term dance versus music training and has potential applications in therapies for motor disorders.

Imaging Brain Development: Benefiting from Individual Variability.

Human brain development is a complex process that evolves from early childhood to young adulthood. Major advances in brain imaging are increasingly being used to characterize the developing brain. These advances have further helped to elucidate the dynamic maturational processes that lead to the emergence of complex cognitive abilities in both typical and atypical development. However, conventional approaches involve categorical group comparison models and tend to disregard the role of widespread interindividual variability in brain development. This review highlights how this variability can inform our understanding of developmental processes. The latest studies in the field of brain development are reviewed, with a particular focus on the role of individual variability and the consequent heterogeneity in brain structural and functional development. This review also highlights how such heterogeneity might be utilized to inform our understanding of complex neuropsychiatric disorders and recommends the use of more dimensional approaches to study brain development.

Structural Gray Matter Differences During Childhood Development in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Multimetric Approach.

BACKGROUND: Autism spectrum disorder is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, repetitive behaviors, and restricted interests. Gray matter differences linked to autism spectrum disorder have been studied using a variety of structural imaging methods, but yielded little consensus; the extent to which disparate results reflect differences in methodology or heterogeneity within autism spectrum disorder is not yet clear. Moreover, very few studies have examined gray matter changes as a function of age in autism spectrum disorder. METHOD: A detailed investigation of gray matter structural development was performed via voxel-based morphometry, cortical thickness, and cortical surface area analyses in 38 autism spectrum disorder versus 46 typically developing children. RESULTS: Relative to typically developing children, the autism spectrum disorder group showed gray matter increases most prominently in the frontal and temporal lobes (including regions such as medial frontal gyrus, Broca's area and posterior temporal cortex), as well as certain parietal and occipital subcortical regions. Gray matter decreases were found only near the temporoparietal junction. Subcortical gray matter increases were found in the putamen and caudate nucleus, while decreases were found in cerebellum. There were age-dependent GM differences in distributed regions including prefrontal cortex, primary sensorimotor cortex, and temporoparietal junction. CONCLUSION: The results underline the distributed nature of gray matter structural differences in autism spectrum disorder and provide a more comprehensive characterization of autism spectrum disorder-related cortical and subcortical gray matter structural differences during childhood and adolescent development.

Dance and the brain: a review.

Dance is a universal form of human expression that offers a rich source for scientific study. Dance provides a unique opportunity to investigate brain plasticity and its interaction with behavior. Several studies have investigated the behavioral correlates of dance, but less is known about the brain basis of dance. Studies on dance observation suggest that long- and short-term dance training affect brain activity in the action observation and simulation networks. Despite methodological challenges, the feasibility of conducting neuroimaging while dancing has been demonstrated, and several brain regions have been implicated in dance execution. Preliminary work from our laboratory suggests that long-term dance training changes both gray and white matter structure. This article provides a critical summary of work investigating the neural correlates of dance. It covers functional neuroimaging studies of dance observation and performance as well as structural neuroimaging studies of expert dancers. To stimulate ongoing dialogue between dance and science, future directions in dance and brain research as well as implications are discussed. Research on the neuroscience of dance will lead to a better understanding of brain-behavior relationships and brain plasticity in experts and nonexperts and can be applied to the development of dance-based therapy programs.

Atypical functional brain connectivity during rest in autism spectrum disorders.

OBJECTIVE: Connectivity atypicalities in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been extensively proposed. The default mode network (DMN) is critical in this study, given the insight it provides for long-distance connectivity, and the importance of regions in this network for introspection and social emotion processing, areas affected in ASD. However, study of this network has largely been limited to adults; research earlier in development is lacking. The objective of this study was to examine DMN connectivity in children/adolescents with ASD. METHODS: A total of 115 children/adolescents, aged 6 to 17 years (71 males with ASD and 44 group age-matched TD males) were included in these analyses. We examined group differences in (1) functional connectivity between the posterior cingulate cortex and regions across the brain, (2) connectivity within the DMN as a function of age and intelligence quotient (IQ), and (3) the association between DMN connectivity and empathic accuracy. RESULTS: Individuals with ASD, relative to controls, showed either stronger or weaker connectivity between the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and DMN regions, depending on the region, but also showed stronger connectivity with non-DMN regions. A significant group-by-age interaction was observed in functional connectivity between the PCC and medial prefrontal cortex; connectivity increased with age in controls, but decreased in individuals with ASD. No effects of IQ were found. There was a significant group difference in the relation between DMN connectivity and empathic accuracy. INTERPRETATION: Differences in functional connectivity may suggest the presence of neural atypicalities that impact the development of typical connectivity in ASD. In addition to affecting DMN dynamics, these atypicalities may also impact social-cognitive abilities.

Boosting pitch encoding with audiovisual interactions in congenital amusia.

The combination of information across senses can enhance perception, as revealed for example by decreased reaction times or improved stimulus detection. Interestingly, these facilitatory effects have been shown to be maximal when responses to unisensory modalities are weak. The present study investigated whether audiovisual facilitation can be observed in congenital amusia, a music-specific disorder primarily ascribed to impairments of pitch processing. Amusic individuals and their matched controls performed two tasks. In Task 1, they were required to detect auditory, visual, or audiovisual stimuli as rapidly as possible. In Task 2, they were required to detect as accurately and as rapidly as possible a pitch change within an otherwise monotonic 5-tone sequence that was presented either only auditorily (A condition), or simultaneously with a temporally congruent, but otherwise uninformative visual stimulus (AV condition). Results of Task 1 showed that amusics exhibit typical auditory and visual detection, and typical audiovisual integration capacities: both amusics and controls exhibited shorter response times for audiovisual stimuli than for either auditory stimuli or visual stimuli. Results of Task 2 revealed that both groups benefited from simultaneous uninformative visual stimuli to detect pitch changes: accuracy was higher and response times shorter in the AV condition than in the A condition. The audiovisual improvements of response times were observed for different pitch interval sizes depending on the group. These results suggest that both typical listeners and amusic individuals can benefit from multisensory integration to improve their pitch processing abilities and that this benefit varies as a function of task difficulty. These findings constitute the first step towards the perspective to exploit multisensory paradigms to reduce pitch-related deficits in congenital amusia, notably by suggesting that audiovisual paradigms are effective in an appropriate range of unimodal performance.

Auditory global-local processing: effects of attention and musical experience.

In vision, global (whole) features are typically processed before local (detail) features ("global precedence effect"). However, the distinction between global and local processing is less clear in the auditory domain. The aims of the present study were to investigate: (i) the effects of directed versus divided attention, and (ii) the effect musical training on auditory global-local processing in 16 adult musicians and 16 non-musicians. Participants were presented with short nine-tone melodies, each comprised of three triplet sequences (three-tone units). In a "directed attention" task, participants were asked to focus on either the global or local pitch pattern and had to determine if the pitch pattern went up or down. In a "divided attention" task, participants judged whether the target pattern (up or down) was present or absent. Overall, global structure was perceived faster and more accurately than local structure. The global precedence effect was observed regardless of whether attention was directed to a specific level or divided between levels. Musicians performed more accurately than non-musicians overall, but non-musicians showed a more pronounced global advantage. This study provides evidence for an auditory global precedence effect across attention tasks, and for differences in auditory global-local processing associated with musical experience.

Auditory-musical processing in autism spectrum disorders: a review of behavioral and brain imaging studies.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental condition characterized by atypical social and communication skills, repetitive behaviors, and atypical visual and auditory perception. Studies in vision have reported enhanced detailed ("local") processing but diminished holistic ("global") processing of visual features in ASD. Individuals with ASD also show enhanced processing of simple visual stimuli but diminished processing of complex visual stimuli. Relative to the visual domain, auditory global-local distinctions, and the effects of stimulus complexity on auditory processing in ASD, are less clear. However, one remarkable finding is that many individuals with ASD have enhanced musical abilities, such as superior pitch processing. This review provides a critical evaluation of behavioral and brain imaging studies of auditory processing with respect to current theories in ASD. We have focused on auditory-musical processing in terms of global versus local processing and simple versus complex sound processing. This review contributes to a better understanding of auditory processing differences in ASD. A deeper comprehension of sensory perception in ASD is key to better defining ASD phenotypes and, in turn, may lead to better interventions.