Musical Expertise Influences the Processing of Short and Long Auditory Time Intervals: An EEG Study

This data set is the EEG and sociodemographic data for the study cited above. If you have any questions, please contact Nicola Thibault at [e-mail].
Abstract :
Musical expertise has been proven to be beneficial for time perception abilities, with musicians outperforming non-musicians in several explicit timing tasks. However, it is unclear how musical expertise impacts implicit time perception. Twenty non-musicians and fifteen expert musicians participated in an EEG recording during a passive auditory oddball paradigm with .8- and 1.6-s standard time intervals and deviant intervals that were either played earlier or delayed relative to the standard interval. We first confirmed that, as was the case for non-musicians, musicians use different neurofunctional processes to support the perception of short (below 1.2 s) and long (above 1.2 s) time intervals: while deviance detection for long intervals elicited a N1 component, P2 was associated with deviance detection for short time intervals. Interestingly, musicians did not elicit a CNV for longer intervals but show additional components of deviance detection such as i) an attention-related N1 component, even for deviants occurring during short intervals, ii) a N2 component for above and below 1.2-s deviance detection, and iii) a P2 component for above 1.2-s deviance detection. We propose that the N2 component is a marker of explicit deviance detection, and acts as an inhibitory/conflict monitoring of the deviance. This hypothesis was supported by a positive correlation between CNV and N2 amplitudes observed in non-musicians: the CNV reflects the temporal accumulator and can predict explicit detection of the deviance. In expert musicians, a N2 component is observable without CNV, suggesting that deviance detection is optimized and does not require the temporal accumulator. Overall, this study suggests that musical expertise is associated with optimized implicit time perception.

本数据集为上述研究所用的脑电图（EEG）与社会人口学数据。如有任何疑问，请联系Nicola Thibault，邮箱：[e-mail]。

摘要：
已有研究证实，音乐专长对时间感知能力具有积极作用，音乐家在多项显性计时任务中的表现优于非音乐家。但目前尚不明确音乐专长如何影响隐性时间感知。本研究共招募20名非音乐家与15名专业音乐家，在被动听觉Oddball范式下开展脑电图记录，该范式包含0.8秒与1.6秒两种标准时间间隔，以及相对于标准间隔提前或延迟呈现的偏差间隔。
我们首先证实，与非音乐家一致，音乐家依托不同的神经功能过程支撑短于1.2秒与长于1.2秒的时间间隔感知：长间隔的偏差检测会诱发N1成分，而短时间间隔的偏差检测则与P2成分相关。值得注意的是，音乐家在长间隔条件下未诱发关联负变化（CNV），但展现出额外的偏差检测相关脑电成分，具体包括：i）与注意相关的N1成分（即使偏差刺激出现在短间隔时段）；ii）针对1.2秒上下偏差检测的N2成分；iii）针对长于1.2秒偏差检测的P2成分。
我们提出，N2成分可作为显性偏差检测的标志物，承担对偏差的抑制/冲突监测功能。该假说得到了非音乐家群体中观察到的关联负变化（CNV）与N2波幅正相关结果的支持：CNV反映了时间累积过程，可预测对偏差的显性检测。而在专业音乐家中，即便无CNV成分也可观测到N2成分，这表明偏差检测过程已得到优化，无需依赖时间累积机制。综上，本研究表明音乐专长与优化后的隐性时间感知能力存在关联。