Complexity & Networks seminar series, Imperial College London(s)
Title: Serial order encoding, error prediction and information flow during sequential execution: application to music performance
Speaker: Dr. Maria Herrojo Ruiz
Department of Neurology with Chair in Experimental Neurology
Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin
Abstract:
Sequential behaviour is widespread in humans and animals; it is exhibited in simple everyday tasks, such as in locomotion or the grooming behavior of animals, and in hierarchically organized domains, such as language or music performance. In this talk I will describe three lines of work investigating the acquisition and monitoring of simple sensorimotor and more complex musical sequences. In the first part I will describe how approaches of assessing directionality between electrophysiological signals that are constrained by specific hypotheses can characterize predictive error mechanisms in skilled piano performance. In the second part I will present results from a multivariate pattern analysis of intracranial local field potential activity during explicit learning of piano sequences. The results highlight the hierarchical organization of serial order during encoding of movement sequences. In particular, they show that sequence boundaries are encoded in specific patterns of neuronal activity distributed across several frequency regions. Finally, I will relate these studies to a dynamic field theory-based model of sequence generation that we have expanded to investigate the emergence of serial order errors during sequence performance.