TORONTO, June 4, 2020 鈥撀燭here鈥檚 a common belief that聽musicians聽are聽born聽with a聽natural ability聽to play聽music, while most of us have to work twice as hard to hear the difference between musical notes. Now, new research from neuroscientists at 91亚色 suggests the capacity to hear the highs and lows, also known as the major and minor notes in music, may come before you take a single lesson; you may actually be born with it.

The study, published in the , examined the capacity of six-month-old infants to discriminate between a major and a minor musical tone sequence with a unique method that uses eye movements and a visual stimulus.

Previous research with adults has shown that approximately 30 per cent of adults can discriminate this difference but 70 per cent cannot, irrespective of musical training. Researchers found that six-month-old infants show exactly the same breakdown as adults: approximately 30 per cent of them could discriminate the difference and 70 per cent could not.

鈥淎t six months, it鈥檚 highly unlikely that any of these infants have had any formal training in music,鈥� says , associate professor, Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Health and member of Vision: Science to Applications (VISTA) Program at the Centre for Vision Research. 鈥淵es, parents play music for children. All children in western civilization hear music, but they don鈥檛 get that specific training in music. This breakdown, therefore, is due to some inborn mechanism.鈥�

Adler鈥檚 team at 91亚色 collaborated on the study with Professor Charles Chubb, of the University of California at Irvine, whose earlier research with adults and adolescents found there are two populations of individuals: some who can discriminate between the major and minor tones and most who cannot discriminate. In adults, the capacity to discriminate between major and minor was shown not to be due to their level of musical training or their level of music exposure.

The new study extends the existence of those different populations down to infants, suggesting that the source of this difference might be genetic 鈥� a capacity that we are born with.

This capacity would have implications for developing an appreciation of the emotional content of music because it鈥檚 the major and minor notes that give music their emotion.

In the study, researchers conducted trials with 30 six-month-old infants in which they heard a tone-scramble, a series of notes whose quality (major vs. minor) signalled the location (right vs. left) where a subsequent picture (target) would appear. The babies were tasked with determining which side to look when they heard a major or a minor sound. Once they heard a series of notes, a picture would either appear on the right or the left depending on whether it was a major or minor tone scramble. In a second experiment, tone-scrambles did not reliably predict the location of subsequent pictures.

鈥淲hat we measured over time was how the infants learned the association between which tone they heard and where the picture is going to show up. If they can tell the difference in the tone, over time, when they hear the major notes, for example, they鈥檒l make an eye movement to the location for the picture even before the picture appears because they can predict this. This is what we are measuring,鈥� says Adler.

The researchers found that for 33 per cent or one-third of infants, these anticipatory eye movements predicted the picture location with near perfect accuracy; for the other 67 per cent, they were unrelated to the picture location.

These results may also have implications for language development, which relies on some of the same mechanisms and auditory content as music, says Adler.

鈥淭here is a connection between music, music processing and mathematical abilities, as well as language, so whether these things connect up to those abilities聽is an unknown. However, when people talk to babies they change the intonation of their voice and the pitch of their voice so they're changing from major to minor. That is actually an important component for babies to learn聽language. If you don't have the capacity it might affect that ability in learning language.鈥�

Watch Professor Adler explain more about this research in this video below.

91亚色 champions new ways of thinking that drive teaching and research excellence. Our students receive the education they need to create big ideas that make an impact on the world. Meaningful and sometimes unexpected careers result from cross-disciplinary programming, innovative course design and diverse experiential learning opportunities. 91亚色 students and graduates push limits, achieve goals and find solutions to the world鈥檚 most pressing social challenges, empowered by a strong community that opens minds. 91亚色 U is an internationally recognized research university 鈥� our 11 faculties and 25 research centres have partnerships with 200+ leading universities worldwide. Located in Toronto, 91亚色 is the third largest university in Canada, with a strong community of 53,000 students, 7,000 faculty and administrative staff, and more than 300,000 alumni.

91亚色 U's fully bilingual Glendon Campus is home to Southern Ontario's Centre of Excellence for French Language and Bilingual Postsecondary Education.

Media Contact:聽Anjum Nayyar, 91亚色 Media Relations

(437)242 1547,聽anayyar@yorku.ca

The post Maybe we鈥檙e born with it? Study shows some infants can identify differences in musical tones at six months appeared first on News@91亚色.

Study co-led by 91亚色 researcher makes important discovery about plasticity of children鈥檚 brains

TORONTO, JUNE 5, 2019 鈥撀�For children with severe epilepsy, surgery is the last resort used to prevent seizures but the treatment can often come with the risk of both visual and cognitive impairments. Now, a new study funded by the National Eye Institute and jointly led by researchers at 91亚色鈥檚 Faculty of Health and Carnegie Mellon University finds that the brains of children with severe epilepsy can compensate by rewiring for missing regions of the visual cortex after surgery.

鈥淲hat we鈥檙e seeing is remarkable,鈥� said Erez Freud, assistant professor, Department of Psychology in 91亚色鈥檚 Faculty of Health and Centre for Vision Research, co-lead author of the study. 聽鈥淭he most striking case in our findings was a 14-year-old girl who had severe epilepsy that originated from the left side of the brain. The part of the brain that was removed in the surgery is known to mediate the ability to read. Despite this hemisphere being removed, this patient could read with relatively normal functioning and when we scanned her brain using the fMRI we found that this 鈥榬eading region鈥� of the brain had re-mapped to the healthy right hemisphere.鈥�

Brains of children with epilepsy are able to re-map after epilepsy surgery to retain visual perception.

Researchers say this provides strong evidence that the brain has some degree of plasticity. In order for the brain to process visuals normally, it needs to process information sent from the eye and the part of the brain that allows it to understand what the eye is seeing (perception).聽 In order for an individual to see, signals from the eye are first processed in the early visual cortex 鈥� a region at the back of the brain that is necessary for sight 鈥� and then travel through other parts of the cerebral cortex, to allow recognition of patterns, faces, objects, scenes, and words. In adults, even if sight is still intact, injury or removal of even a small area of the brain鈥檚 vision processing centres can lead to dramatic, permanent loss of perception, making them unable to recognize faces or locations or to read. But in children, who are still developing, this part of the brain seems to have plasticity and is able to rewire itself.

Tina Liu, former Ph.D student at Carnegie Mellon University, is co-lead author of the study, and Marlene Behrmann, Professor, Department of Psychology, at Carnegie Mellon University, is senior author.

The researchers recruited 10 children who had undergone surgery for severe epilepsy between the ages of six and 17, caused in most cases by an injury such as stroke in infancy or a tumor. The team compared the neural and visuoperceptual profiles of these patients with 10 healthy control children. Three of the children who had gone through a surgery had lost parts of the visual cortex on the right side, three on the left side, and four had lost other parts of the brain not involved in perception, serving as a second kind of control group. Of the six children who had areas of the visual cortex removed, four had permanent reductions in peripheral vision on one side due to loss of the early visual cortex. In each case, the epilepsy was resolved or significantly improved in all children after surgery.

In order to better understand how plasticity could be occurring, researchers conducted the study in two phases. In the first phase, each participant was exposed to different series of tasks that tested the children鈥檚 perception abilities, including facial recognition, the ability to classify objects, reading, and pattern recognition. They did this by asking the children to identify objects, places and faces. In the second phase, researchers imaged participants鈥� brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI scan). Participants were asked to lie down in the MRI and watch a stream of pictures, words, faces, objects and places. The fMRI allowed researchers to accurately visualize areas in the brain that were activated and measure the response to these pictures.

With the exception of two individuals who had greater portions of the cortex altered, researchers found all patients showed normal perceptual performance on tasks and were able to identify faces and objects, places and words, falling within the normal range even for complex perception and memory activities. Even in participants who did not show clear remapping, results showed the healthy region of the brain was still able to compensate for missing regions in the hemisphere of the brain where lesions were removed, and in a way not usually seen in adults. Researchers say these findings offer new insights into the malleability of the cortex in children.

鈥淚t鈥檚 possible that early surgical treatment for children with epilepsy might be what allows this re-mapping," said Freud. 鈥淭his may be because epilepsy is an on-going condition of the brain and with early removal of the tissue, the brain may have time to rewire itself to the other healthy hemisphere and can, therefore, compensate for the functions that are impaired in the other part of the brain. But more research is needed to better understand exactly what the developmental processes are that mediate this compensation.鈥�

is currently funded by the Vision: Science to Applications program at 91亚色.

The study is published in the

91亚色 champions new ways of thinking that drive teaching and research excellence. Our students receive the education they need to create big ideas that make an impact on the world. Meaningful and sometimes unexpected careers result from cross-disciplinary programming, innovative course design and diverse experiential learning opportunities. 91亚色 students and graduates push limits, achieve goals and find solutions to the world's most pressing social challenges, empowered by a strong community that opens minds. 91亚色 U is an internationally recognized research university - our 11 faculties and 25 research centres have partnerships with 200+ leading universities worldwide. Located in Toronto, 91亚色 is the third largest university in Canada, with a strong community of 53,000 students, 7,000 faculty and administrative staff, and more than 300,000 alumni.

91亚色 U's fully bilingual Glendon Campus is home to Southern Ontario's Centre of Excellence for French Language and Bilingual Postsecondary Education.

Media Contacts:

Anjum Nayyar, 91亚色 Media Relations, 416-736-2100 ext. 44543,聽anayyar@yorku.ca

Abby Simmons, Assistant Dean of Communications, Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, 412-268-6094 (office) | 412-956-9425 (cell),聽abbysimmons@cmu.edu

The post Study: Brains of children with epilepsy able to re-map after surgery to retain visual perception appeared first on News@91亚色.