@article{pmid41364985,

title = {Effect of personalized dorsolateral prefrontal cortex neuromodulation on default mode connectivity and working memory in schizophrenia spectrum disorders},

author = {Stéphanie Grot and Luigi De Benedictis and Alan Bougeard and Philippe Albouy and Emmanuel Stip and Stéphane Potvin and Pierre Orban},

doi = {10.1016/j.pscychresns.2025.112093},

issn = {1872-7506},

year  = {2026},

date = {2026-03-01},

journal = {Psychiatry Res Neuroimaging},

volume = {356},

pages = {112093},

abstract = {Schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD) are marked by working memory impairments associated with abnormal functional brain connectivity. Although transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) shows promise in modulating dysconnectivity patterns and improving cognitive symptoms, current protocols often lack target personalization, overlooking significant variability in functional network topography between individuals. Twenty-two individuals with SSD and cognitive deficits underwent 20Hz repetitive TMS to the left lateral prefrontal cortex. Personalized TMS targeted regions with the strongest central executive-default mode network (CEN-DMN) antagonism, while standardized TMS focused on the EEG F3 site. Resting-state fMRI scans were conducted pre- and post-TMS sessions to evaluate changes in CEN-DMN connectivity, and working memory performance was assessed after the post-TMS fMRI scan. Both TMS protocols failed to significantly alter CEN-DMN connectivity or improve cognitive function, which may be due to the low reliability of the biomarker used for personalized targeting. However, stronger DMN intra-network connectivity at the stimulation site was positively correlated with a reduction in CEN-DMN connectivity and improved working memory performance. These findings highlight the need for more extensive fMRI data for better target determination, and suggest that targeting left prefrontal areas with higher DMN connectivity could more effectively modulate functional connectivity and improve working memory performance through TMS.},

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pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{pmid41283515,

title = {Spectrotemporal Modulation Sensitivity in Speech and Melody Processing Among Mandarin Speakers},

author = {Baihan Lyu and Yanchang Li and Philippe Albouy and Benjamin Morillon and Robert J Zatorre and Yi Du},

doi = {10.1097/AUD.0000000000001751},

issn = {1538-4667},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-11-01},

journal = {Ear Hear},

abstract = {OBJECTIVES: Spectrotemporal acoustical markers enable humans to distinguish between speech and song across diverse cultures. Prior research revealed an asymmetric sensitivity in auditory processing: melody perception is more susceptible to spectral degradation, whereas speech sentence perception is more affected by temporal degradation. However, these findings have primarily been based on non-tonal languages, raising questions about how tonal languages, such as Mandarin, might influence these sensitivity patterns. This study investigates how Mandarin speakers process spectrotemporal features in speech and melody, addressing whether tonal language experience modulates the asymmetric spectrotemporal modulation sensitivity patterns observed in non-tonal languages.nnDESIGN: Twenty-five Mandarin-speaking participants were recruited in the main experiment to discriminate speech or melody content of Mandarin songs under conditions of varying spectral or temporal degradation. An additional 25 participants in the control experiment listened to degraded hummed melodies or spoken sentences under similar degradation conditions.nnRESULTS: Consistent with findings in non-tonal language speakers, Mandarin listeners were more sensitive to temporal degradation in speech and spectral degradation in melody. In addition, they exhibited heightened susceptibility to spectral degradation around 2 cyc/kHz in melody perception, indicating enhanced pitch sensitivity in music, possibly due to tonal language experience. Control analyses revealed reduced sensitivity when hummed melodies or spoken sentences were presented in a single domain, suggesting the influence of cognitive load on auditory processing.nnCONCLUSIONS: These findings underscore the quasi-universality of spectrotemporal cues in speech and melody perception across languages. However, tonal language experience subtly enhances spectral processing in music, providing new insights into the interaction between speech and music perception across different linguistic backgrounds.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{pmid41168236,

title = {Auditory and vibrotactile interactions in perception of timbre acoustic features},

author = {Loonan Chauvette and Anne Sophie Grenier and Philippe Albouy and Emily Coffey and Robert Zatorre and Andréanne Sharp},

doi = {10.1038/s41598-025-21908-4},

issn = {2045-2322},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-10-01},

journal = {Sci Rep},

volume = {15},

number = {1},

pages = {38055},

abstract = {Recently, there has been increasing interest in developing auditory-to-vibrotactile sensory devices. However, the potential of these technologies is constrained by our limited understanding of which features of complex sounds can be perceived through vibrations. The present study aimed to investigate the vibrotactile perception of acoustic features related to timbre, an essential component to identify environmental, speech and musical sounds. Discrimination thresholds were measured for six features: three spectral (number of harmonics, harmonic roll-off ratio, even-harmonic attenuation) and three temporal (attack time, amplitude modulation depth and amplitude modulation frequency) using auditory, vibrotactile and combined auditory + vibrotactile stimulation in 31 adult humans with normal tactile and auditory sensitivity. Result revealed that all spectral and temporal features can be reliably discriminated via vibrotactile stimulation only. However, for spectral features, vibrotactile thresholds were significantly higher (i.e., worse) than auditory thresholds whereas, for temporal features, only vibrotactile amplitude modulation frequency was significantly higher. With simultaneous auditory and tactile presentation, thresholds significantly improved for attack time and amplitude modulation depth, but not for any of the spectral acoustic features. These results suggest that vibrotactile temporal cues have a more straightforward potential for assisting auditory perception, while vibrotactile spectral cues may require specialized signal processing schemes.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{pmid40056421,

title = {Perception of short, but not long, time intervals is modality specific: EEG evidence using vibrotactile stimuli},

author = {Nicola Thibault and Andréanne Sharp and Philippe Albouy and Simon Grondin},

doi = {10.1093/cercor/bhaf051},

issn = {1460-2199},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-03-01},

journal = {Cereb Cortex},

volume = {35},

number = {3},

abstract = {A longstanding debate in cognitive neuroscience questions whether temporal processing is modality-specific or governed by a "central clock" mechanism. We propose that this debate stems from neglecting the duration of the intervals processed, as studies supporting modality-specific models of time perception often focus on below 1.2-s intervals. To address this, we examined the neuronal dynamics underlying the perception of time intervals shorter and longer than 1.2-s using vibrotactile stimuli. Twenty participants underwent electroencephalogram recordings during a passive tactile oddball paradigm. We compared brain responses to standard and deviant intervals, with deviants occurring either earlier or later than the standard in both below and above 1.2-s conditions. Event-related potentials revealed distinct deviance-related components: a P250 for deviance detection of short deviants and an N400 long deviants. Generators lied in a modality-specific network for short intervals, while long intervals activated a broader, higher-level network. We found no evidence of the contingent negative variation in the tactile modality, questioning its role as a universal marker of temporal accumulation. Our findings suggest that short intervals involve modality-specific circuits, while longer intervals engage distributed networks, shedding light on whether temporal processing is centralized or distributed.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{pmid39757971,

title = {Human Auditory-Motor Networks Show Frequency-Specific Phase-Based Coupling in Resting-State MEG},

author = {Oscar Bedford and Alix Noly-Gandon and Alberto Ara and Alex I Wiesman and Philippe Albouy and Sylvain Baillet and Virginia Penhune and Robert J Zatorre},

doi = {10.1002/hbm.70045},

issn = {1097-0193},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {Hum Brain Mapp},

volume = {46},

number = {1},

pages = {e70045},

abstract = {Perception and production of music and speech rely on auditory-motor coupling, a mechanism which has been linked to temporally precise oscillatory coupling between auditory and motor regions of the human brain, particularly in the beta frequency band. Recently, brain imaging studies using magnetoencephalography (MEG) have also shown that accurate auditory temporal predictions specifically depend on phase coherence between auditory and motor cortical regions. However, it is not yet clear whether this tight oscillatory phase coupling is an intrinsic feature of the auditory-motor loop, or whether it is only elicited by task demands. Further, we do not know if phase synchrony is uniquely enhanced in the auditory-motor system compared to other sensorimotor modalities, or to which degree it is amplified by musical training. In order to resolve these questions, we measured the degree of phase locking between motor regions and auditory or visual areas in musicians and non-musicians using resting-state MEG. We derived phase locking values (PLVs) and phase transfer entropy (PTE) values from 90 healthy young participants. We observed significantly higher PLVs across all auditory-motor pairings compared to all visuomotor pairings in all frequency bands. The pairing with the highest degree of phase synchrony was right primary auditory cortex with right ventral premotor cortex, a connection which has been highlighted in previous literature on auditory-motor coupling. Additionally, we observed that auditory-motor and visuomotor PLVs were significantly higher across all structures in the right hemisphere, and we found the highest differences between auditory and visual PLVs in the theta, alpha, and beta frequency bands. Last, we found that the theta and beta bands exhibited a preference for a motor-to-auditory PTE direction and that the alpha and gamma bands exhibited the opposite preference for an auditory-to-motor PTE direction. Taken together, these findings confirm our hypotheses that motor phase synchrony is significantly enhanced in auditory compared to visual cortical regions at rest, that these differences are highest across the theta-beta spectrum of frequencies, and that there exist alternating information flow loops across auditory-motor structures as a function of frequency. In our view, this supports the existence of an intrinsic, time-based coupling for low-latency integration of sounds and movements which involves synchronized phasic activity between primary auditory cortex with motor and premotor cortical areas.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{pmid38991139,

title = {Musical Expertise Influences the Processing of Short and Long Auditory Time Intervals: An Electroencephalography Study},

author = {Nicola Thibault and Stéphanie D'amours and Philippe Albouy and Simon Grondin},

doi = {10.1162/jocn_a_02219},

issn = {1530-8898},

year  = {2024},

date = {2024-10-01},

journal = {J Cogn Neurosci},

volume = {36},

number = {10},

pages = {2268--2280},

abstract = {Musical expertise has been proven to be beneficial for time perception abilities, with musicians outperforming nonmusicians in several explicit timing tasks. However, it is unclear how musical expertise impacts implicit time perception. Twenty nonmusicians and 15 expert musicians participated in an EEG recording during a passive auditory oddball paradigm with 0.8- and 1.6-sec standard time intervals and deviant intervals that were either played earlier or delayed relative to the standard interval. We first confirmed that, as was the case for nonmusicians, musicians use different neurofunctional processes to support the perception of short (below 1.2 sec) and long (above 1.2 sec) time intervals: Whereas deviance detection for long intervals elicited a N1 component, P2 was associated with deviance detection for short time intervals. Interestingly, musicians did not elicit a contingent negative variation (CNV) for longer intervals but show additional components of deviance detection such as (i) an attention-related N1 component, even for deviants occurring during short intervals; (ii) a N2 component for above and below 1.2-sec deviance detection, and (iii) a P2 component for above 1.2-sec deviance detection. We propose that the N2 component is a marker of explicit deviance detection and acts as an inhibitory/conflict monitoring of the deviance. This hypothesis was supported by a positive correlation between CNV and N2 amplitudes: The CNV reflects the temporal accumulator and can predict explicit detection of the deviance. In expert musicians, a N2 component is observable without CNV, suggesting that deviance detection is optimized and does not require the temporal accumulator. Overall, this study suggests that musical expertise is associated with optimized implicit time perception.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{pmid38844457,

title = {Spectro-temporal acoustical markers differentiate speech from song across cultures},

author = {Philippe Albouy and Samuel A Mehr and Roxane S Hoyer and Jérémie Ginzburg and Yi Du and Robert J Zatorre},

doi = {10.1038/s41467-024-49040-3},

issn = {2041-1723},

year  = {2024},

date = {2024-06-01},

journal = {Nat Commun},

volume = {15},

number = {1},

pages = {4835},

abstract = {Humans produce two forms of cognitively complex vocalizations: speech and song. It is debated whether these differ based primarily on culturally specific, learned features, or if acoustical features can reliably distinguish them. We study the spectro-temporal modulation patterns of vocalizations produced by 369 people living in 21 urban, rural, and small-scale societies across six continents. Specific ranges of spectral and temporal modulations, overlapping within categories and across societies, significantly differentiate speech from song. Machine-learning classification shows that this effect is cross-culturally robust, vocalizations being reliably classified solely from their spectro-temporal features across all 21 societies. Listeners unfamiliar with the cultures classify these vocalizations using similar spectro-temporal cues as the machine learning algorithm. Finally, spectro-temporal features are better able to discriminate song from speech than a broad range of other acoustical variables, suggesting that spectro-temporal modulation-a key feature of auditory neuronal tuning-accounts for a fundamental difference between these categories.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{pmid38448636,

title = {Spectrotemporal cues and attention jointly modulate fMRI network topology for sentence and melody perception},

author = {Felix Haiduk and Robert J Zatorre and Lucas Benjamin and Benjamin Morillon and Philippe Albouy},

doi = {10.1038/s41598-024-56139-6},

issn = {2045-2322},

year  = {2024},

date = {2024-03-01},

journal = {Sci Rep},

volume = {14},

number = {1},

pages = {5501},

abstract = {Speech and music are two fundamental modes of human communication. Lateralisation of key processes underlying their perception has been related both to the distinct sensitivity to low-level spectrotemporal acoustic features and to top-down attention. However, the interplay between bottom-up and top-down processes needs to be clarified. In the present study, we investigated the contribution of acoustics and attention to melodies or sentences to lateralisation in fMRI functional network topology. We used sung speech stimuli selectively filtered in temporal or spectral modulation domains with crossed and balanced verbal and melodic content. Perception of speech decreased with degradation of temporal information, whereas perception of melodies decreased with spectral degradation. Applying graph theoretical metrics on fMRI connectivity matrices, we found that local clustering, reflecting functional specialisation, linearly increased when spectral or temporal cues crucial for the task goal were incrementally degraded. These effects occurred in a bilateral fronto-temporo-parietal network for processing temporally degraded sentences and in right auditory regions for processing spectrally degraded melodies. In contrast, global topology remained stable across conditions. These findings suggest that lateralisation for speech and music partially depends on an interplay of acoustic cues and task goals under increased attentional demands.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{pmid38442128,

title = {Cross-frequency coupling in cortico-hippocampal networks supports the maintenance of sequential auditory information in short-term memory},

author = {Arthur Borderie and Anne Caclin and Jean-Philippe Lachaux and Marcela Perrone-Bertollotti and Roxane S Hoyer and Philippe Kahane and Hélène Catenoix and Barbara Tillmann and Philippe Albouy},

doi = {10.1371/journal.pbio.3002512},

issn = {1545-7885},

year  = {2024},

date = {2024-03-01},

journal = {PLoS Biol},

volume = {22},

number = {3},

pages = {e3002512},

abstract = {It has been suggested that cross-frequency coupling in cortico-hippocampal networks enables the maintenance of multiple visuo-spatial items in working memory. However, whether this mechanism acts as a global neural code for memory retention across sensory modalities remains to be demonstrated. Intracranial EEG data were recorded while drug-resistant patients with epilepsy performed a delayed matched-to-sample task with tone sequences. We manipulated task difficulty by varying the memory load and the duration of the silent retention period between the to-be-compared sequences. We show that the strength of theta-gamma phase amplitude coupling in the superior temporal sulcus, the inferior frontal gyrus, the inferior temporal gyrus, and the hippocampus (i) supports the short-term retention of auditory sequences; (ii) decodes correct and incorrect memory trials as revealed by machine learning analysis; and (iii) is positively correlated with individual short-term memory performance. Specifically, we show that successful task performance is associated with consistent phase coupling in these regions across participants, with gamma bursts restricted to specific theta phase ranges corresponding to higher levels of neural excitability. These findings highlight the role of cortico-hippocampal activity in auditory short-term memory and expand our knowledge about the role of cross-frequency coupling as a global biological mechanism for information processing, integration, and memory in the human brain.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}