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EURASIP Journal on Audio, Speech, and Music Processing
EURASIP Journal on Audio, Speech, and Music Processing Cover Image
  • Research Article
  • Open Access

Electrophysiological Study of Algorithmically Processed Metric/Rhythmic Variations in Language and Music

  • 1Email author,
  • 2, 3,
  • 1, 4,
  • 1, 5,
  • 2,
  • 2 and
  • 1
EURASIP Journal on Audio, Speech, and Music Processing20072007:030194

https://doi.org/10.1155/2007/30194

©  Sølvi Ystad et al. 2007

  • Received: 1 October 2006
  • Accepted: 28 June 2007
  • Published:

Abstract

This work is the result of an interdisciplinary collaboration between scientists from the fields of audio signal processing, phonetics and cognitive neuroscience aiming at studying the perception of modifications in meter, rhythm, semantics and harmony in language and music. A special time-stretching algorithm was developed to work with natural speech. In the language part, French sentences ending with tri-syllabic congruous or incongruous words, metrically modified or not, were made. In the music part, short melodies made of triplets, rhythmically and/or harmonically modified, were built. These stimuli were presented to a group of listeners that were asked to focus their attention either on meter/rhythm or semantics/harmony and to judge whether or not the sentences/melodies were acceptable. Language ERP analyses indicate that semantically incongruous words are processed independently of the subject's attention thus arguing for automatic semantic processing. In addition, metric incongruities seem to influence semantic processing. Music ERP analyses show that rhythmic incongruities are processed independently of attention, revealing automatic processing of rhythm in music.

Keywords

  • Signal Processing
  • Acoustics
  • Automatic Processing
  • Electrophysiological Study
  • Algorithmically Process

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Authors’ Affiliations

(1)
Laboratoire de Mécanique et d'Acoustique, CNRS, Marseille, France
(2)
Institut de Neurosciences Cognitives de la Méditerranée, CNRS, Marseille Cadex, 13402, France
(3)
Psychology Department, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN 37127, USA
(4)
IRCAM, 1 Place Igor Stravinsky, Paris, 75004, France
(5)
France Télécom, Lannion Cedex, 22307, France

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Copyright

© Sølvi Ystad et al. 2007

This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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