Descrizione del progetto
Comprendere i processi cerebrali alla base della percezione del movimento corporeo e del ritmo musicale
Gli esseri umani dimostrano un’abilità straordinaria di percepire e produrre ritmo musicale, ma i meccanismi cerebrali di questo comportamento sono ancora sconosciuti. Una delle ipotesi principali sostiene che l’attività delle regioni cerebrali uditive e motorie sia strettamente interconnessa. Questo accoppiamento spiegherebbe il fatto che gli umani provino l’impulso spontaneo di muoversi a ritmo di musica e che, a sua volta, il movimento corporeo possa modificare il modo in cui si percepisce il ritmo. Il progetto Rythm and Brains, finanziato dal CER, si propone di svelare questi meccanismi cerebrali attraverso la combinazione di concetti e metodi della psicologia sperimentale e delle neuroscienze cognitive. I risultati chiariranno i meccanismi del cervello che regolano la percezione e il movimento degli esseri umani, e si propongono di orientare le pratiche cliniche che ricorrono al ritmo per valutare e migliorare la funzione delle reti sensomotorie dopo un danno cerebrale.
Obiettivo
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.
Campo scientifico
Programma(i)
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
ERC-STG - Starting GrantIstituzione ospitante
1348 Louvain La Neuve
Belgio