Rebecca Scheurich

Postdoc
McGill Univ
Email author

Stability of oscillatory neural activity supports auditory-motor synchronization

Rebecca Scheurich, Valentin Bégel, Ella Sahlas, and Caroline Palmer

I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Sheldon Memory Lab at McGill University with Professor Signy Sheldon. I am currently studying how individual differences in factors such as sleep quality and skill expertise influence how we experience and remember events in the real world. I completed my PhD in the Sequence Production Lab in 2021 with Professor Caroline Palmer where I studied how musical experience affects the flexibility with which individuals coordinate their actions with sound. Broadly speaking, my research interests are individual differences in human cognition and behaviour.

Stability of oscillatory neural activity supports auditory-motor synchronization

Rebecca Scheurich, Valentin Bégel, Ella Sahlas, and Caroline Palmer
Abstract

Previous research has consistently shown an enhancement of auditory-motor synchronization with musical training (e.g., Repp & Doggett, 2007; Scheurich, Zamm, & Palmer, 2018), yet the neural dynamics underlying this enhancement are still not well understood. The current study investigated how stability of neural oscillatory activity at the rate of performance changes with musical training and relates to stability of auditory-motor synchronization. EEG activity was recorded as musicians and nonmusicians tapped a familiar melody at a comfortable and steady rate (Spontaneous Production Rate; SPR), and subsequently synchronized their tapping of that melody with a metronome at the SPR as well as slower rates. Synchronization stability was measured via the standard deviation of the signed asynchronies. Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA), a non-linear technique that quantifies the temporal dynamics of a system, was run on EEG activity during synchronization. Neural stability was measured via the meanline (average diagonal line length) outcome from RQA. Musicians synchronized with overall greater stability than nonmusicians, as indicated by smaller standard deviations of the signed asynchronies across rates. Musicians also showed overall greater neural stability, as indicated by longer meanline of auditory-motor neural activity across rates. Importantly, synchronization and neural stability were correlated such that as synchronization stability increased, so did neural stability. These findings suggest that musical training increases stability of auditory-motor neural oscillations at the performance rate, which supports successful auditory-motor synchronization.