Barbara Nerness

All Publications

• Performance monitoring of improvisation and score-playing in a turn-taking piano duet: An EEG study using altered auditory feedback. Psychophysiology Kim, K., Fram, N., Nerness, B., Turnbull, C., Chander, A., Georgieva, E., James, S., Wright, M., Fujioka, T. 2024: e14704

  Abstract

  In music ensemble performance, perception-action coupling enables the processing of auditory feedback from oneself and other players. However, improvised actions may affect this coupling differently from predetermined actions. This study used two-person EEG to examine how pianists responded to altered pitch feedback to their own or their partner's actions while they alternated scores or improvised melodies. Feedback-related negativity (FRN) response for self-action was greater in scored than improvised conditions, indicating the enhanced action encoding by playing the score. However, subsequent P3a and P3b responses for self-action were not different across score and improvisation. Further, the P3b response was greater when the two pianists exchanged similar types of melodies (i.e., both improvised or both scores) compared with different types of melodies, suggesting that later cognitive processes may be associated with the task relevance or level of jointness. The presence of the FRN and P3 complex in self-generated improvised action points to the dynamic nature of performance monitoring even without preconceived action plans. In contrast, the FRN and P3 complex in partner-generated improvised actions were subdued compared to the baseline, likely due to the unpredictable nature of the improvised actions of others. Finally, we found a tendency that higher trait empathy was associated with smaller self-action FRN, possibly implying musicians' prioritization of joint goals. Overall, our results suggest that improvisation in a musical turn-taking task may be distinct from score-playing for the earlier processes of performance monitoring, whereas later processes might involve updating a joint representation of the musical context.

  View details for DOI 10.1111/psyp.14704

  View details for PubMedID 39558854

• Predictability of higher-order temporal structure of musical stimuli is associated with auditory evoked response. International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology Dauer, T. n., Nerness, B. n., Fujioka, T. n. 2020

  Abstract

  Sound predictability resulting from repetitive patterns can be implicitly learned and often neither requires nor captures our conscious attention. Recently, predictive coding theory has been used as a framework to explain how predictable or expected stimuli evoke and gradually attenuate obligatory neural responses over time compared to those elicited by unpredictable events. However, these results were obtained using the repetition of simple auditory objects such as pairs of tones or phonemes. Here we examined whether the same principle would hold for more abstract temporal structures of sounds. If this is the case, we hypothesized that a regular repetition schedule of a set of musical patterns would reduce neural processing over the course of listening compared to stimuli with an irregular repetition schedule (and the same set of musical patterns). Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded while participants passively listened to 6-8 min sequences in which five different four-tone patterns with temporally regular or irregular repetition were presented successively in a randomized order. N1 amplitudes in response to the first tone of each musical pattern were significantly less negative at the end of the regular sequence compared to the beginning, while such reduction was absent in the irregular sequence. These results extend previous findings by showing that N1 reflects automatic learning of the predictable higher-order structure of sound sequences, while continuous engagement of preattentive auditory processing is necessary for the unpredictable structure.

  View details for DOI 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2020.04.002

  View details for PubMedID 32325078