Dear all,
You are invited to attend this week's Cognitive Area Seminar (*Friday March 4th, 3:30 - 5 PM; Stewart Biology Building, 1205 Docteur Penfield Ave., Room S3/4*).
The talk will be given by* Dominique Vuvan (Post-doc, **International Laboratory for Brain, Music, and Sound Research**),* and is titled "False Feedback Makes Listeners Tone-Deaf." For a full abstract, see below dashed line.
If you are unable to attend this week's talk, there will be more opportunities. Please see our full schedule @: http://www.mcgill.ca/ psychology/events-colloquia-0/brownbag-series.
If you would like to join the Cognitive Area group mailing list for further notification of our seminars, please go to this link and follow the instructions: http://mx0.psych.mcgill.ca/mailman/listinfo/coggroup.
Hope that you are able to attend!
Best, Anna
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*False Feedback Makes Listeners Tone-Deaf* Dominique Vuvan, Post-doc, International Laboratory for Brain, Music, and Sound Research (BRAMS)
The mental representation of pitch structure (tonal knowledge) is a core component of musical experience and can be learned implicitly through exposure to music. One theory of congenital amusia (tone-deafness), posits that conscious access to tonal knowledge is disrupted, leading to a severe deficit of music cognition. We demonstrate this idea by providing random performance feedback to neurotypical listeners while they listened to melodies for tonal incongruities. To assess the impact of the random feedback, we measured performance accuracy and confidence while monitoring electrical brain activity. The false feedback rate was correlated with a reduction of accuracy and confidence, and a suppression of the late positive brain response usually elicited by conscious detection of a tonal violation. The early right anterior negativity, taken to reflect tonal knowledge, was unaffected by false feedback. This successful simulation of amusia in a normal brain highlights the key role of feedback in learning, and thereby provides a new avenue for the rehabilitation of learning disorders.