They identify a set of neurons that responds to singing and not to other music

A team of neuroscientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in the United States, has identified a population of neurons in the human brain that responds to singing, but not to other types of music.

These neurons, found in the auditory cortex, appear to respond to the specific combination of voice and music, but not to normal speech or instrumental music, according to the researchers, who acknowledge, however, that they still don’t know what exactly they do. , so further investigation will be necessary.

“There is a population of neurons that responds to singing and very close by there is another population of neurons that responds widely to a lot of music”, Sam Norman-Haignere, formerly a researcher at MIT and now at the University of Rochester Medical Center, explains in a statement.

The work, published in the journal Current Biology, builds on a 2015 study in which the same research team used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify a population of neurons in the brain’s auditory cortex that responds specifically to music.

The researchers then used fMRI to scan the participants’ brains as they listened to a collection of 165 sounds, including different types of speech and music, as well as everyday sounds like a finger tapping or a dog barking.

For that study, the researchers devised “a novel” method of analyzing the fMRI data that allowed them to identify six neuronal populations with different response patterns, including the music-selective population and one that responds to speech.

Now, in the new work, the scientists used a technique known as electrocorticography, which allows electrical activity to be recorded using electrodes placed on the skull.

This cannot normally be done in humans because it is invasive, but it is often used to monitor epilepsy patients who are about to undergo surgery to treat their seizures.

During that time, if the patients agree, they can participate in research that consists of measuring their brain activity while performing certain tasks; For this study, the team was able to gather data from 15 participants over several years.

For these, the researchers played back the same set of 165 sounds they used previously and statistical analyses: “When we applied this method to this data set, this neural response pattern emerged that was only responding to singing,” says Norman-Haignere, who says that this is an unexpected finding.

This specific point is located in the upper part of the temporal lobe, near the regions that are selective for language and music.

The localization suggests that this specific population of neurons may respond to features such as perceived pitch or the interaction between words and perceived pitch, before sending the information to other parts of the brain for further processing.