Descripción del proyecto
Comprender los procesos cerebrales subyacentes a la percepción y el movimiento del cuerpo al ritmo musical
Los seres humanos muestran una notable capacidad para percibir y producir ritmo musical, pero los mecanismos cerebrales que subyacen a este comportamiento siguen siendo desconocidos. Una hipótesis destacada es que la actividad de las regiones cerebrales auditivas y motoras está estrechamente acoplada. Este acoplamiento explicaría que nos vemos arrastrados a movernos espontáneamente al ritmo de la música y, a su vez, que el movimiento del cuerpo puede cambiar la forma en que escuchamos un ritmo. El equipo del proyecto Rhythm and Brains, financiado por el Consejo Europeo de Investigación, pretende descubrir estos mecanismos cerebrales mediante la combinación de conceptos y métodos de la psicología experimental y la neurociencia cognitiva. Los resultados arrojarán luz sobre los mecanismos cerebrales que rigen la percepción y el movimiento humanos, y tendrán como objetivo fundamentar prácticas clínicas que utilizan el ritmo para analizar y mejorar la función de las redes sensoriomotoras tras sufrir daños cerebrales.
Objetivo
Entrainment to music is a culturally widespread activity with increasingly recognized pro-social and
therapeutic effects. Music powerfully compels us to move to the musical rhythm, showcasing the
remarkable ability of humans to perceive and produce rhythmic inputs. However, the underlying
functional mechanisms remain unknown. One view, which dates back to Darwin, is that the relevant
mechanisms are ancient and anchored in the evolutionary oldest subcortical parts of the brain.
However, recent research argues that rhythm perception is a complex cognitive function involving
temporally precise communication between cortical sensory and motor regions, even in the absence
of overt body movement or intention to move.
This project aims to uncover these mechanisms by combining concepts and methods of
experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Specifically, the research will (i) unravel the
mechanisms at the interface of rhythmic inputs, motor skills and brain activity, (ii) establish the
active role of motor representations in rhythm perception, (iii) track the development of these
processes even prior to language in infants, and (iv) investigate the physiopathology and restoration
of these processes in brain-damaged patients.
To achieve these objectives, the project will use a comparable method across different experimental
settings, the frequency-tagging approach, whose reliability and advantages have been recently
established as an innovative method to capture neural entrainment to rhythm in humans. Results
will provide important knowledge into how psychological, environmental and neural mechanisms
affect such entrainment. Clarifying these mechanisms provides an optimal framework to unravel the
role of an intrinsic sensory-motor coupling underlying perception and how this coupling develops
over the lifespan. It is also critical for optimising clinical rehabilitation practices using music as a
powerful non-verbal cross-cultural means of communication.
Ámbito científico
Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
ERC-STG - Starting GrantInstitución de acogida
1348 Louvain La Neuve
Bélgica