Musical Experience and Autism Symptomatology on the Encoding of Temporal Audiovisual Information
Location
PANEL: Interdisciplinary Exploration of Music Perception and Tradition
CELA Moffett
Document Type
Presentation - Open Access
Start Date
4-26-2024 4:00 PM
End Date
4-26-2024 5:00 PM
Abstract
Neural circuitry encodes relevant temporal features from natural, audiovisual, rhythmic events via entrainment. While musical experience has been shown to enhance entrainment, autistic traits have been associated with deficit behavior on unisensory and multisensory tasks. Given the gap in knowledge regarding how individual differences impact entrainment, the purpose of this study is to better understand the processing of frequency-tagged dynamic audiovisual stimuli between groups based on musical experience (ME) and autistic traits (measured by the autism quotient, AQ). Through psychophysical synchrony judgements and electroencephalography (EEG), this study compares perception of audiovisual synchrony and the encoding power for each composite stimulus between ME and AQ groups. Additionally, superadditivity is used to measure the neural enhancement of multisensory stimuli compared to the processing of the composite unisensory stimuli. The findings of this study suggest no differences in asynchrony detection between ME or AQ groups. However, EEG findings indicate that trained musicians have stronger encoding of unisensory stimuli compared to inexperienced musicians. Those with low AQ tend to be better at encoding high frequency multisensory stimuli and have increased superadditivity compared to those with high AQ. Future research in this area will investigate interactions between musical experience and Autism Spectrum Disorder in order to understand its use as a therapeutic tool in addressing some of the impairments to temporal encoding.
Keywords:
Cognitive neuroscience, Multisensory integration, Musical experience, Autism Spectrum Disorder
Recommended Citation
Orozco, Andrea and Dandawate, Arohi, "Musical Experience and Autism Symptomatology on the Encoding of Temporal Audiovisual Information" (2024). Research Symposium. 3.
https://digitalcommons.oberlin.edu/researchsymp/2024/presentations/3
Major
Neuroscience
Project Mentor(s)
Leslie Kwakye, Neuroscience
2024
Musical Experience and Autism Symptomatology on the Encoding of Temporal Audiovisual Information
PANEL: Interdisciplinary Exploration of Music Perception and Tradition
CELA Moffett
Neural circuitry encodes relevant temporal features from natural, audiovisual, rhythmic events via entrainment. While musical experience has been shown to enhance entrainment, autistic traits have been associated with deficit behavior on unisensory and multisensory tasks. Given the gap in knowledge regarding how individual differences impact entrainment, the purpose of this study is to better understand the processing of frequency-tagged dynamic audiovisual stimuli between groups based on musical experience (ME) and autistic traits (measured by the autism quotient, AQ). Through psychophysical synchrony judgements and electroencephalography (EEG), this study compares perception of audiovisual synchrony and the encoding power for each composite stimulus between ME and AQ groups. Additionally, superadditivity is used to measure the neural enhancement of multisensory stimuli compared to the processing of the composite unisensory stimuli. The findings of this study suggest no differences in asynchrony detection between ME or AQ groups. However, EEG findings indicate that trained musicians have stronger encoding of unisensory stimuli compared to inexperienced musicians. Those with low AQ tend to be better at encoding high frequency multisensory stimuli and have increased superadditivity compared to those with high AQ. Future research in this area will investigate interactions between musical experience and Autism Spectrum Disorder in order to understand its use as a therapeutic tool in addressing some of the impairments to temporal encoding.
