Biology subjects

Celma-Miralles, A.

Publications and source records attributed to Celma-Miralles, A..

4 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Music facilitates sleep initiation in adults with sleep-onset insomnia: The role of neural synchronization

Sleep-onset insomnia is widespread in modern society, and many individuals turn to music to improve their sleep. While clinical studies have shown that music can positively affect sleep quality, the impact on sleep initiation remains unclear. Furthermore, there is limited knowledge on the mechanisms by which music may facilitate sleep. Here, we investigated whether music can facilitate sleep onset and if the effect is related to brain waves synchronizing to the slow beat of the sleep music. We recorded participants with sleep-onset insomnia (N=53) during a 30-minute afternoon rest using electroencephalography (EEG). Participants were randomly divided into two groups. Twenty-four participants listened to music chosen from a sleep music playlist while resting, and 29 rested in silence. We evaluated the transition from wakefulness towards sleep with the delta-alpha ratio of the EEG. To assess neural synchronization to the beat of the music, we used an EEG frequency tagging approach. We found a higher degree of transition towards sleep in the music group compared to silence over the 30-minutes resting period. Furthermore, higher beat stability in the music was reflected in stronger neural frequency tagging at the musical beat. However, the analyses showed no relationship between sleep initiation and neural synchronization to the beat. In sum, our results revealed that music has a positive effect on sleep initiation and that there is neural synchronization to naturalistic sleep music with a steady beat, but we found no indication that this neural synchronization is the central mechanism driving enhanced sleep initiation with music.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

Inharmonicity enhances brain signals of attentional capture and auditory stream segregation

Harmonicity is an important feature for auditory perception. However, the neural substrates of processing inharmonic sounds remain unclear. Here, we systematically manipulated the harmonicity of sounds by introducing random jittering to their frequencies. Using electroencephalography, we studied the effect of inharmonicity on markers of auditory prediction errors -- mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3a -- in a roving oddball paradigm. Inharmonic sounds with a constant jittering pattern generated similar MMN and stronger P3a responses than harmonic sounds. In contrast, MMN responses became undetectable when the jittering pattern changed between consecutive sounds, suggesting that prediction errors are weighted by sequential but not spectral uncertainty. Interestingly, inharmonic sounds generated an object-related negativity, a response associated with the segregation of auditory objects. Our results suggest that inharmonicity induces the segregation of the auditory scene into different streams, captures attention, and gives rise to specific neural processes that are independent from the predictive mechanisms underlying sequential deviance detection.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2021

Beat Perception in Polyrhythms: Time is Structured in Binary Units

In everyday life, we group and subdivide time to understand the sensory environment surrounding us. Our perceptual system establishes hierarchical structures by nesting different groups of time intervals. Organizing time in units such as diurnal rhythms, phrases, and beat patterns, is fundamental to everyday behavior, speech, and music. When listening to music, we extract rhythmic regularities to create a hierarchical metrical structure that enables us to predict the timing of the next events. Foot tapping and head bobbing to musical rhythms are observable evidence of this process. In the special case of polyrhythms, at least two metrical structures compete to become the reference for these temporal regularities, rendering several possible beats with which we can synchronize our movements. While there is general agreement that tempo, pitch, and loudness influence beat perception in polyrhythms, we focused on the yet neglected influence of beat subdivisions. In three online experiments, 300 participants listened to a range of polyrhythms and tapped their index fingers in time with the perceived beat. The polyrhythms consisted of two simultaneously presented isochronous pulse trains with different ratios (2:3, 2:5, 3:4, 3:5, 4:5, 5:6) and different tempi. For ratios 2:3 and 3:4, we additionally manipulated the pitch of the pulse trains. Results showed a highly robust influence of subdivision grouping on beat perception manifested as a propensity towards beats that are subdivided into two or four equally spaced units, as opposed to beats with three or more complex groupings of subdivisions. Additionally, lower pitched pulse trains were more likely to be perceived as the beat. Our findings suggest that subdivisions, not beats, are the basic unit of beat perception, and that the principle underlying the binary grouping of subdivisions reflects a propensity towards simplicity. This preference for simple grouping is widely applicable to human perception and cognition of time.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2021

Neural entrainment facilitates duplets: Frequency-tagging differentiates musicians and non-musicians when they tap to the beat

Motor coordination to an isochronous beat improves when it is subdivided into equal intervals. Here, we study if this subdivision benefit (i) varies with the kind of subdivision, (ii) is enhanced in individuals with formal musical training, and (iii), is an inherent property of neural oscillations. We recorded electroencephalograms of musicians and non-musicians during: (a) listening to an isochronous beat, (b) listening to one of 4 different subdivisions, (c) listening to the beat again, and (d) listening and tapping the beat with the same subdivisions as in (b). We found that tapping consistency and neural entrainment in condition (d) was enhanced in non-musicians for duplets (1:2) compared to the other types of subdivisions. Musicians showed overall better tapping performance and were equally good at tapping together with duplets, triplets (1:3) and quadruplets (1:4), but not with quintuplets (1:5). This group difference was reflected in enhanced neural responses in the triplet and quadruplet conditions. Importantly, for all participants, the neural entrainment to the beat and its first harmonic (i.e. the duplet frequency) increased after listening to each of the subdivisions (c compared to a). Since these subdivisions are harmonics of the beat frequency, the observed preference of the brain to enhance the simplest subdivision level (duplets) may be an inherent property of neural oscillations. In sum, a tapping advantage for simple binary subdivisions is reflected in neural oscillations to harmonics of the beat, and formal training in music can enhance it. Highlights- The neural entrainment to periodic sounds only differs between musicians and non-musicians when they perform a predictive sensorimotor synchronization task. - After listening to a subdivided beat, the frequencies related to the beat and its first harmonic are enhanced in the EEG, likely stabilizing the perception of the beat. - There is a natural advantage for binary structures in sensorimotor synchronization, observed in the tapping of duplets by non-musicians, which can be extended to other subdivisions after extensive musical training.

neuroscience↗