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•Auditory stimuli were presented at specific phases of slow waves during sleep.•Inter-stimulus interval (ISI) determines global vs. local modulation of slow waves.•Short ISIs in stimulus trains enable local, phase-specific modulation of slow waves.•Long ISIs evoke a global K-complex response irrespective of the targeted phase.•Different EEG responses suggest the engagement of distinct neural circuits. Conflicting evidence exists regarding the role of the targeted slow-wave phase in determining the direction and spatial specificity of slow-wave activity (SWA) modulation via phase-targeted auditory stimulation (PTAS) during sleep. To reconcile these discrepancies, we re-analyzed high-density electroencephalography (hd-EEG) data from previous studies, focusing on SWA responses to auditory stimuli presented with varying inter-stimulus intervals (ISIs). Our analysis reveals that ISI is a primary determinant of PTAS-induced SWA modulation, exceeding the influence of targeted phase alone. Specifically, auditory stimulation with longer ISIs evoked a global increase in SWA, consistent with a stereotypical auditory-evoked K-complex (KC), independent of targeted phase. Conversely, longer stimulus trains with rapid successive stimulus presentation resulted in spatially localized, phase-dependent SWA modulation, with up-PTAS enhancing and down-PTAS reducing SWA locally around the targeted area. This distinction resolves inconsistencies in prior PTAS studies by demonstrating that phase alone is insufficient in predicting slow-wave responses. Rather, it was the ISI which determined whether PTAS resulted in a global, KC-mediated response or a local, phase-specific modulation of SWA. Consequently, our findings refine the mechanistic understanding of PTAS, suggesting that ISI regulates the engagement of distinct neural circuits and thereby potentially enables the targeted manipulation of specific slow-wave subtypes and their associated functions.

PHYSIOLOGICAL RESEARCH HAS SHOWN THAT AUDITORYrhythm has a profound effect on the motor system. Evidence shows that the auditory and motor system have a rich connectivity across a variety of cortical, subcortical, and spinal levels. The auditory system—a fast and precise processor or temporal information—projects into motor structures in the brain, creating entrainment between the rhythmic signal and the motor response. Based on these physiological connections, a large number of clinical studies have researched the effectiveness of rhythm and music to produce functional change in motor therapy for stroke, Parkinson's disease, traumatic brain injury, and other conditions. Results have been strong in favor of rhythmic auditory stimulation (RAS) to significantly improve gait and upper extremity function. Comparative studies also have shown RAS to be more effective than other sensory cues and other techniques in physical rehabilitation.

Sleep is a potential early, modifiable risk factor for cognitive decline and dementia. Impaired slow wave sleep (SWS) is pronounced in individuals with cognitive impairment (CI). Cognitive decline and impairments of SWS are bi-directionally linked in a vicious cycle. SWS can be enhanced non-invasively using phase-locked acoustic stimulation (PLAS), potentially breaking this vicious cycle. Eighteen healthy older adults (HC, age mean±sd , 68.3 ± 5.1) and 16 older adults (age mean±sd , 71.9 ± 3.9) with CI (Montreal Cognitive Assessment ≤ 25) underwent one baseline (sham-PLAS) night and three consecutive stimulation nights (real-PLAS). EEG responses and blood-plasma amyloid beta Aβ42/Aβ40 ratio were measured pre- and post-intervention, as was episodic memory. The latter was again evaluated 1 week and 3 months after the intervention. In both groups, PLAS induced a significant electrophysiological response in both voltage- and time–frequency analyses, and memory performance improved in association with the magnitude of this response. In the CI group, both electrophysiological and associated memory effects were delayed compared to the healthy group. After 3 intervention nights, electrophysiological response to PLAS was no longer different between CI and HC groups. Only in the CI sample, stronger electrophysiological responses were significantly associated with improving post-intervention Aβ42/Aβ40 ratios. PLAS seems to improve SWS electrophysiology, memory, and amyloid dynamics in older adults with CI. However, effects on memory require more time to unfold compared to healthy older adults. This indicates that PLAS may become a potential tool to ameliorate cognitive decline, but longer interventions are necessary to compensate for declining brain integrity. This study was pre-registered (clinicaltrials.gov: NCT04277104).

Objectives: To investigate the effects of rhythmic auditory stimulation (RAS) on gait patterns in comparison with changes after neurodevelopmental treatment (NDT/Bobath) in adults with cerebral palsy. Design: A repeated-measures analysis between the pretreatment and posttreatment tests and a comparison study between groups. Setting: Human gait analysis laboratory. Subjects: Twenty-eight cerebral palsy patients with bilateral spasticity participated in this study. The subjects were randomly allocated to either neurodevelopmental treatment (n = 13) or rhythmic auditory stimulation (n = 15). Interventions: Gait training with rhythmic auditory stimulation or neurodevelopmental treatment was performed three sessions per week for three weeks. Temporal and kinematic data were analysed before and after the intervention. Rhythmic auditory stimulation was provided using a combination of a metronome beat set to the individual’s cadence and rhythmic cueing from a live keyboard, while neurodevelopmental treatment was implemented following the traditional method. Main measures: Temporal data, kinematic parameters and gait deviation index as a measure of overall gait pathology were assessed. Results: Temporal gait measures revealed that rhythmic auditory stimulation significantly increased cadence, walking velocity, stride length, and step length (P < 0.05). Kinematic data demonstrated that anterior tilt of the pelvis and hip flexion during a gait cycle was significantly ameliorated after rhythmic auditory stimulation (P < 0.05). Gait deviation index also showed modest improvement in cerebral palsy patients treated with rhythmic auditory stimulation (P < 0.05). However, neurodevelopmental treatment showed that internal and external rotations of hip joints were significantly improved, whereas rhythmic auditory stimulation showed aggravated maximal internal rotation in the transverse plane (P < 0.05). Conclusions: Gait training with rhythmic auditory stimulation or neurodevelopmental treatment elicited differential effects on gait patterns in adults with cerebral palsy.

We evaluated the effects of 3 types of noncontingent auditory stimulation (music, white noise, recordings of vocal stereotypy) on 2 children with autism who engaged in high rates of vocal stereotypy. For both participants, the music condition was the most effective in decreasing vocal stereotypy to near‐zero levels, resulted in the highest parent social validity ratings, and was selected as most preferred in treatment preference evaluations.

The human ability to continuously track dynamic environmental stimuli, in particular speech, is proposed to profit from “entrainment” of endogenous neural oscillations, which involves phase reorganization such that “optimal” phase comes into line with temporally expected critical events, resulting in improved processing. The current experiment goes beyond previous work in this domain by addressing two thus far unanswered questions. First, how general is neural entrainment to environmental rhythms: Can neural oscillations be entrained by temporal dynamics of ongoing rhythmic stimuli without abrupt onsets? Second, does neural entrainment optimize performance of the perceptual system: Does human auditory perception benefit from neural phase reorganization? In a human electroencephalography study, listeners detected short gaps distributed uniformly with respect to the phase angle of a 3-Hz frequency-modulated stimulus. Listeners’ ability to detect gaps in the frequency-modulated sound was not uniformly distributed in time, but clustered in certain preferred phases of the modulation. Moreover, the optimal stimulus phase was individually determined by the neural delta oscillation entrained by the stimulus. Finally, delta phase predicted behavior better than stimulus phase or the event-related potential after the gap. This study demonstrates behavioral benefits of phase realignment in response to frequency-modulated auditory stimuli, overall suggesting that frequency fluctuations in natural environmental input provide a pacing signal for endogenous neural oscillations, thereby influencing perceptual processing.

Infants must learn about many cognitive domains (e.g., language, music) from auditory statistics, yet capacity limits on their cognitive resources restrict the quantity that they can encode. Previous research has established that infants can attend to only a subset of available acoustic input. Yet few previous studies have directly examined infant auditory attention, and none have directly tested theorized mechanisms of attentional selection based on stimulus complexity. This work utilizes model-based behavioral methods that were recently developed to examine visual attention in infants (e.g., Kidd, Piantadosi, & Aslin, 2012). The present results demonstrate that 7- to 8-month-old infants selectively attend to nonsocial auditory stimuli that are intermediately predictable/complex with respect to their current implicit beliefs and expectations. These findings provide evidence of a broad principle of infant attention across modalities and suggest that sound-to-sound transitional statistics heavily influence the allocation of auditory attention in human infants.

Research in basic and clinical neuroscience of music conducted over the past decades has begun to uncover music’s high potential as a tool for rehabilitation. Advances in our understanding of how music engages parallel brain networks underpinning sensory and motor processes, arousal, reward, and affective regulation, have laid a sound neuroscientific foundation for the development of theory-driven music interventions that have been systematically tested in clinical settings. Of particular significance in the context of motor rehabilitation is the notion that musical rhythms can entrain movement patterns in patients with movement-related disorders, serving as a continuous time reference that can help regulate movement timing and pace. To date, a significant number of clinical and experimental studies have tested the application of rhythm- and music-based interventions to improve motor functions following central nervous injury and/or degeneration. The goal of this review is to appraise the current state of knowledge on the effectiveness of music and rhythm to modulate movement spatiotemporal patterns and restore motor function. By organizing and providing a critical appraisal of a large body of research, we hope to provide a revised framework for future research on the effectiveness of rhythm- and music-based interventions to restore and (re)train motor function.

While it is a well-established finding that subjects' own names (SON) and familiar voices are salient during wakefulness, we here investigated processing of environmental stimuli during sleep including deep N3 and REM sleep. Besides the effects of sleep depth we investigated how sleep-specific EEG patterns (i.e. sleep spindles and slow oscillations [SOs]) relate to stimulus processing. Using 256-channel EEG we studied processing of auditory stimuli by means of event-related oscillatory responses (de-/synchronisation, ERD/ERS) and potentials (ERPs) in N = 17 healthy sleepers. We varied stimulus salience by manipulating subjective (SON vs. unfamiliar name) and paralinguistic emotional relevance (familiar vs. unfamiliar voice, FV/UFV). Results reveal that evaluation of voice familiarity continues during all NREM sleep stages and even REM sleep suggesting a ‘sentinel processing mode’ of the human brain in the absence of wake-like consciousness. Especially UFV stimuli elicit larger responses in a 1–15 Hz range suggesting they continue being salient. Beyond this, we find that sleep spindles and the negative slope of SOs attenuate information processing. However, unlike previously suggested they do not uniformly inhibit information processing, but inhibition seems to be scaled to stimulus salience. •A person's own name is more salient during wakefulness than an unfamiliar name.•Voice familiarity evokes a differential response in NREM as well as REM sleep.•Stimulus processing is inhibited during the negative slow oscillation slope.•Sleep-specific inhibitory EEG patterns vary with stimulus salience.•Results suggest a ‘sentinel processing mode’ during sleep.

Recent functional imaging studies demonstrated that both the left and right supramarginal gyri (SMG) are activated when healthy right-handed subjects make phonological word decisions. However, lesion studies typically report difficulties with phonological processing after left rather than right hemisphere damage. Here, we used a unique dual-site transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) approach to test whether the SMG in the right hemisphere contributes to modality-independent (i.e., auditory and visual) phonological decisions. To test task-specificity, we compared the effect of real or sham TMS during phonological, semantic, and perceptual decisions. To test laterality and anatomical specificity, we compared the effect of TMS over the left, right, or bilateral SMG and angular gyri. The accuracy and reaction times of phonological decisions were selectively disrupted relative to semantic and perceptual decisions when real TMS was applied over the left, right, or bilateral SMG. These effects were not observed for TMS over the angular gyri. A follow-up experiment indicated that the threshold-intensity for inducing a disruptive effect on phonological decisions was identical for unilateral TMS over the right or left SMG. Taken together, these findings provide converging evidence that the right SMG contributes to accurate and efficient phonological decisions in the healthy brain, with no evidence that the left and right SMG can compensate for one another during TMS. Our findings motivate detailed studies of phonological processing in patients with acute or long-term damage of the right SMG.