Biology subjects

Zhou, Y.-d.

Publications and source records attributed to Zhou, Y.-d..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2022

Neural mechanisms of musical syntax and tonality, and the effect of musicianship.

The neural basis for the processing of musical syntax has previously been examined almost exclusively in classical tonal music, which is characterized by strictly organized hierarchical structure. The present study investigated the neural mechanisms for processing musical syntax across genres varying in tonality - classical, impressionist, and atonal music - and, in addition, examined how musicianship modulates such processing. Results showed that, first, the dorsal stream, including bilateral inferior frontal gyrus and superior temporal gyrus, plays a key role in the perception of tonality. Second, right fronto-temporal regions were crucial in allowing musicians to outperform non-musicians in musical syntactic processing; musicians also benefit from a cortical-subcortical network including pallidum and cerebellum, suggesting more auditory-motor interaction in musicians than in non-musicians. Third, left pars triangularis carries out on-line computations independently of tonality and musicianship, whereas right pars triangularis is sensitive to tonality and partly dependent on musicianship. Finally, unlike tonal music, processing of atonal music could not be differentiated from that of scrambled notes, both behaviorally and neurally, even among musicians. The present study highlights the importance of studying varying music genres and experience levels, and provides a better understanding of musical syntax and tonality processing and how such processing is modulated by music experience.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2022

Mixed selectivity coding of content-temporal detail by dorsomedial posterior parietal neurons

The dorsomedial posterior parietal cortex is part of a higher-cognition network implicated in elaborate processes underpinning memory formation, recollection, episodes reconstruction, and temporal information processing. Neural coding for complex episodic processing is however under-documented. Here we revealed a set of neural codes of neuroethogram in the primate parietal cortex. Analyzing neural responses in macaque dmPPC to naturalistic videos, we discovered several groups of neurons that are sensitive to different categories of ethogram-items and to low-level sensory features, and saccadic eye movement. We also discovered that the processing of category and feature information by these neurons is sustained by accumulation of temporal information over a long timescale up to 30 s, corroborating its reported long temporal receptive windows. We performed an additional behavioral experiment and found that saccade-related activities could not account for the mixed neuronal responses elicited by the video stimuli. We further observed monkeys scan-paths and gaze consistency are modulated by video content. Taken altogether, these neural findings explain how dorsomedial PPC weaves fabrics of ongoing experiences together in real-time. The high dimensionality of neural representations should motivate us to shift the focus of attention from pure selectivity neurons to mixed selectivity neurons, especially in increasingly complex naturalistic task designs. HIGHLIGHTSO_LINeural codes for "neuroethogram" in macaque dorsomedial parietal cortex C_LIO_LIParietal neural codes exhibit mixed selectivity of event features C_LIO_LIDorsomedial PPC neurons support a long temporal receptive window for episodes C_LIO_LISaccadic movement could not explain away mixed neuronal responses C_LIO_LIConsistency in scan-path and gaze shown across viewing repetitions C_LI

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2020

Behavioral evidence for memory replay of video episodes in macaque monkeys

Humans recall the past by replaying fragments of events temporally. Here, we demonstrate a similar effect in macaques. We trained six rhesus monkeys with a temporal-order judgement (TOJ) task and collected 5000 TOJ trials. In each trial, they watched a naturalistic video of about 10 s comprising two across-context clips, and after a 2-s delay, performed TOJ between two frames from the video. The monkeys apply a non-linear forward, time-compressed replay mechanism during the temporal-order judgement. In contrast with humans, such compression of replay is however not sophisticated enough to allow them to skip over irrelevant information by compressing the encoded video globally. We also reveal that the monkeys detect event contextual boundaries and such detection facilitates recall by an increased rate of information accumulation. Demonstration of a time-compressed, forward replay like pattern in the macaque monkeys provides insights into the evolution of episodic memory in our lineage. Impact StatementMacaque monkeys temporally compress past experiences and use a forward-replay mechanism during judgment of temporal-order between episodes.

neuroscience↗