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Processes involved in tempo perception: a CNV analysis
Author(s) -
Pfeuty Micha,
Ragot Richard,
Pouthas Viviane
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/1469-8986.00008
Subject(s) - psychology , contingent negative variation , audiology , perception , interval (graph theory) , electroencephalography , time perception , beat (acoustics) , engram , tone (literature) , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , neuroscience , linguistics , medicine , mathematics , physics , combinatorics , acoustics , philosophy
The purpose of this research was to study the mechanisms underlying tempo perception, by looking at their electrophysiological brain correlates. The subjects’ task consisted of comparing the tempos of two isochronous tone sequences made up of either three (condition I3) or six (condition I6) 600–ms intervals. Contingent negative variation (CNV), known to be linked to the judgment of a single interval, kept increasing in amplitude for three intervals during tempo encoding, thereby providing evidence of the occurrence of CNVs also for several intervals in succession. This CNV increase could reflect the use of interval–based processes in the building of the interval memory trace. During the comparison phase, a CNV decrease was observed in condition I6, suggesting that subjects did not build a new memory trace, but used beat–based processes to check whether the beats of the new tempo occurred at the times they anticipated.