The Effect of Musical Experience and Autism Spectrum Disorder on the Encoding of Dynamic Audiovisual Temporal Information

Location

Science Center Perlik Commons

Document Type

Poster

Start Date

5-13-2022 12:00 PM

End Date

5-13-2022 2:00 PM

Abstract

Musical training has been associated with a wide variety of benefits in speech, memory, audiovisual integration and attention; however, understanding how musical expertise affects the encoding of environmental stimuli remains under investigation. While much research has shown auditory processing benefits from musical experience, the overall effects on multisensory integration (MSI) and unisensory visual processing remains unknown. Additionally, musicians have been proven to have more precise temporal acuity and sharper temporal windows. In comparison, increased autism symptomatology has been associated with a broader temporal window and a lack of multisensory neural enhancement in auditory-tactile tasks. We investigated whether musical experience and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) influence the encoding of dynamic audiovisual stimuli using event-related potentials (ERPs) through electroencephalogy (EEG). Additionally, superadditivity is used as a measure of MSI. In line with previous findings, our results indicate that experienced musicians are more accurate in detecting asynchrony compared to non-musicians, specifically when the auditory is faster than the visual. In terms of autism symptomatology, those with low autistic symptomatology are better at detecting asynchrony compared to those with high symptomatology, specifically when the auditory is faster than the visual. Preliminary EEG findings suggest that musical experience and autism spectrum disorder may affect encoding at resonant frequencies. Future work on this project will investigate interactions between musical experience and autism symptomatology in order to understand its use as a therapeutic tool in addressing some of the impairments to temporal encoding.

Keywords:

Multisensory Integration, Musical Experience, ASD, EEG

Notes

Presenters:
Andrea Orozco
Ty Weatherspoon
Myles Felt

Project Mentor(s)

Leslie Kwakye, Neuroscience

2022

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May 13th, 12:00 PM May 13th, 2:00 PM

The Effect of Musical Experience and Autism Spectrum Disorder on the Encoding of Dynamic Audiovisual Temporal Information

Science Center Perlik Commons

Musical training has been associated with a wide variety of benefits in speech, memory, audiovisual integration and attention; however, understanding how musical expertise affects the encoding of environmental stimuli remains under investigation. While much research has shown auditory processing benefits from musical experience, the overall effects on multisensory integration (MSI) and unisensory visual processing remains unknown. Additionally, musicians have been proven to have more precise temporal acuity and sharper temporal windows. In comparison, increased autism symptomatology has been associated with a broader temporal window and a lack of multisensory neural enhancement in auditory-tactile tasks. We investigated whether musical experience and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) influence the encoding of dynamic audiovisual stimuli using event-related potentials (ERPs) through electroencephalogy (EEG). Additionally, superadditivity is used as a measure of MSI. In line with previous findings, our results indicate that experienced musicians are more accurate in detecting asynchrony compared to non-musicians, specifically when the auditory is faster than the visual. In terms of autism symptomatology, those with low autistic symptomatology are better at detecting asynchrony compared to those with high symptomatology, specifically when the auditory is faster than the visual. Preliminary EEG findings suggest that musical experience and autism spectrum disorder may affect encoding at resonant frequencies. Future work on this project will investigate interactions between musical experience and autism symptomatology in order to understand its use as a therapeutic tool in addressing some of the impairments to temporal encoding.