International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research

ABSTRACTStuttering is a developmental speech fluency disorder linked to timing deficits in speech motor control. Given the shared neural mechanisms between rhythmic timing and speech production, rhythm‐based interventions may hold promise for stuttering. This proof‐of‐concept study evaluated the feasibility and potential benefits of a gamified rhythmic training program, Rhythm Workers (RW), in preadolescents who stutter. Twenty‐one children (aged 9–12) were randomly assigned to RW or an active control game, which they played at home for 3 weeks. We assessed feasibility and potential training effects on rhythmic, cognitive, and speech‐related abilities. Both games were well accepted, and compliance was moderate to high. Only participants trained on the rhythm game showed moderate enhancements in rhythmic synchronization, interference control, oromotor performance, and reduction of stuttering after training. The improvements (except for interference control) correlated with the training dose. Moreover, speech fluency gains were associated with improved rhythmic performance. While some effects did not reach statistical significance due to the limited sample size, the observed dose–response patterns and domain‐specific improvements support the feasibility and promise of rhythmic gaming for young people who stutter. This study provides preliminary evidence that rhythm‐based training can enhance speech and cognitive outcomes in preadolescents who stutter.

Recently, there has been increasing interest in developing auditory-to-vibrotactile sensory devices. However, the potential of these technologies is constrained by our limited understanding of which features of complex sounds can be perceived through vibrations. The present study aimed to investigate the vibrotactile perception of acoustic features related to timbre, an essential component to identify environmental, speech and musical sounds. Discrimination thresholds were measured for six features: three spectral (number of harmonics, harmonic roll-off ratio, even-harmonic attenuation) and three temporal (attack time, amplitude modulation depth and amplitude modulation frequency) using auditory, vibrotactile and combined auditory + vibrotactile stimulation in 31 adult humans with normal tactile and auditory sensitivity. Result revealed that all spectral and temporal features can be reliably discriminated via vibrotactile stimulation only. However, for spectral features, vibrotactile thresholds were significantly higher (i.e., worse) than auditory thresholds whereas, for temporal features, only vibrotactile amplitude modulation frequency was significantly higher. With simultaneous auditory and tactile presentation, thresholds significantly improved for attack time and amplitude modulation depth, but not for any of the spectral acoustic features. These results suggest that vibrotactile temporal cues have a more straightforward potential for assisting auditory perception, while vibrotactile spectral cues may require specialized signal processing schemes.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1038/s41598-025-21908-4.

Musicians are often regarded as a positive example of brain plasticity and associated cognitive benefits. This emerges when experienced musicians (e.g., musicians with more than 10 years of music training and practice) are compared with nonmusicians. A frequently observed behavioral finding is a short-term memory advantage of the former over the latter. Although available meta-analysis reported that the effect size of this advantage is medium (Hedges’s g = 0.5), no literature study was adequately powered to estimate reliably an effect of such size. This multilab study has been ideated, realized, and conducted in lab by several groups that have been working on this topic. Our ultimate goal was to provide a community-driven shared and reliable estimate of the musicians’ short-term memory advantage (if any) and set a method and a standard for future studies in neuroscience and psychology comparing musicians and nonmusicians. Thirty-three research units recruited a total of 600 experienced musicians and 600 nonmusicians, a number that is sufficiently large to estimate a small effect size (Hedges’s g = 0.3) with a high statistical power (i.e., 95%). Subsequently, we measured the difference in short-term memory for musical, verbal, and visuospatial stimuli. We also looked at cognitive, personality, and socioeconomic factors that might mediate the difference. Musicians had better short-term memory than nonmusicians for musical, verbal, and visuospatial stimuli with an effect size of, respectively, Hedges’s g s = 1.08 (95% confidence interval [CI] = [0.94, 1.22]; large), 0.16 (95% CI = [0.02 0.30]; very small), and 0.28 (95% CI = [0.15, 0.41]; small). This work sets the basis for sound research practices in studies comparing musicians and nonmusicians and contributes to the ongoing debate on the possible cognitive benefits of musical training.

Engaging in music practice is often assumed to increase empathy and prosociality. However, data in support of this relationship are limited, leaving unclear which components of empathy (cognitive empathy, emotional contagion, and emotional disconnection) and prosocial behaviors, if any, would be affected. Here, we recruited musicians with more than 2 years of musical experience ( n = 80) and nonmusicians ( n = 89) to measure empathy (using subjective and objective measures) and prosociality (using economic games). We hypothesized that musicians would score higher than nonmusicians on empathy and prosociality, and that musicians who practice more would show greater effects. Using classical and Bayesian analyses of variance (ANOVAs), we found no difference between musicians and nonmusicians in empathy and prosociality, and no correlation with the amount of practice. Exploratory analyses revealed associations between the age of onset of music practice and empathy, suggesting that it is not music practice per se but specifically its initiation in early life that could be linked to empathy. These findings challenge the common assumption that music practice in general increases empathy and prosociality and invites to explore in which specific contexts music practice does so (e.g., particular age ranges or group-based settings).

In cognitive science, the sensation of "groove" has been defined as the pleasurable urge to move to music. When listeners rate rhythmic stimuli on derived pleasure and urge to move, ratings on these dimensions are highly correlated. However, recent behavioural and brain imaging work has shown that these two components may be separable. To examine this potential separability, our study investigates the sensation of groove in people with specific musical anhedonia. Individuals with musical anhedonia have a blunted ability to derive pleasure from music but can still derive pleasure from other domains (e.g., sex and food). People with musical anhedonia were identified as those with scores in the lower 10% of scores on the Barcelona Musical Reward Questionnaire, but who had no deficits in music perception, no symptoms of depression, average levels of physical and social anhedonia, and sensitivity to punishment and reward. We predicted that if the two components of groove are separable, individuals with musical anhedonia would experience lower levels of derived pleasure but have comparable ratings of wanting to move compared to controls. Groove responses were measured in an online study (N = 148) using a set of experimenter-generated musical stimuli varying in rhythmic and harmonic complexity, which were validated in several previous studies. Surprisingly, we found no significant differences in groove response between individuals with musical anhedonia (n = 17) and a matched control group (n = 17). Mediation analyses for the anhedonia sample found that wanting to move ratings fully mediated the effect of rhythmic and harmonic complexity on pleasure ratings. Taken together, these results indicate that the urge to move may compensate for the blunted pleasure sensation in those with musical anhedonia. More generally, these results suggest that the urge to move is a primary source of pleasure in the groove response.

Deficits in rhythm perception and production have been reported in a variety of psychiatric, neurodevelopmental and neurologic disorders. Since correlations between rhythmic abilities and cognitive functions have been demonstrated in neurotypical individuals, we here investigate whether and how rhythmic abilities are associated with cognitive functions in 35 participants with neurocognitive deficits due to acquired brain lesions. We systematically assessed a diverse set of rhythm perception and production abilities including time and beat perception and finger-tapping tasks. Neuropsychological tests were applied to assess separable cognitive functions. Using multiple regression analyses we show that lower variability in aligning movements to a pacing sequence was predicted by better inhibitory control and better working memory performance. Working memory performance also predicted lower variability of rhythmic movements in the absence of an external pacing sequence and better anticipatory timing to sequences with gradual tempo changes. Importantly, these predictors remained significant for all regression models when controlling for other cognitive variables (i.e., cognitive flexibility, information processing speed, and verbal learning ability) and potential confounders (i.e., age, symptom strength of depression, manual dexterity, duration of illness, severity of cognitive impairment, and musical experience). Thus, all rhythm production abilities were significantly predicted by measures of executive functions. In contrast, rhythm perception abilities (time perception/beat perception) were not predicted by executive functions in this study. Our results, enhancing the understanding of cognitive underpinnings of rhythmic abilities in individuals with neurocognitive deficits, may be a first mandatory step to further potential therapeutic implications of rhythm-based interventions in neuropsychological rehabilitation.

Comparison between tapping performance of humans during a synchronization task and new metrics that characterize the U-fiber system of white matter revealed large intersubject correlations between phase accuracy at specific tempos and the strength of connectivity in their audiomotor system.

Differences in sensorimotor integration mechanisms have been observed between people who stutter (PWS) and controls who do not. Delayed auditory feedback (DAF) introduces timing discrepancies between perception and action, disrupting sequence production in verbal and non-verbal domains. While DAF consistently enhances speech fluency in PWS, its impact on non-verbal sensorimotor synchronization abilities remains unexplored. A total of 11 PWS and 13 matched controls completed five tasks: (1) unpaced tapping; (2) synchronization-continuation task (SCT) without auditory feedback; (3) SCT with DAF, with instruction either to align the sound in time with the metronome; or (4) to ignore the sound and align their physical tap to the metronome. Additionally, we measured participants' sensitivity to detecting delayed feedback using a (5) delay discrimination task. Results showed that DAF significantly affected performance in controls as a function of delay duration, despite being irrelevant to the task. Conversely, PWS performance remained stable across delays. When auditory feedback was absent, no differences were found between PWS and controls. Moreover, PWS were less able to detect delays in speech and tapping tasks. These findings show subtle differences in non-verbal sensorimotor performance between PWS and controls, specifically when action-perception loops are disrupted by delays, contributing to models of sensorimotor integration in stuttering.

Although cochlear implants can restore auditory inputs to deafferented auditory cortices, the quality of the sound signal transmitted to the brain is severely degraded, limiting functional outcomes in terms of speech perception and emotion perception. The latter deficit negatively impacts cochlear implant users' social integration and quality of life; however, emotion perception is not currently part of rehabilitation. Developing rehabilitation programs incorporating emotional cognition requires a deeper understanding of cochlear implant users' residual emotion perception abilities. To identify the neural underpinnings of these residual abilities, we investigated whether machine learning techniques could be used to identify emotion-specific patterns of neural activity in cochlear implant users. Using existing electroencephalography data from 22 cochlear implant users, we employed a random forest classifier to establish if we could model and subsequently predict from participants' brain responses the auditory emotions (vocal and musical) presented to them. Our findings suggest thatconsistent emotion-specific biomarkers exist in cochlear implant users, which could be used to develop effective rehabilitation programs incorporating emotion perception training. This study highlights the potential of machine learning techniques to improve outcomes for cochlear implant users, particularly in terms of emotion perception.