In a change-blindness paradigm, major parts of an image or a film can be modified, in full “sight” of the observer, but these changes will go unnoticed if they are not attended to. Take for instance the change-blindness illusion from vision (e.g., O’Regan et al., 1999) 1. Illusions are a vivid way to remind us about some basic but essential facts about perception. Illusions as a Signature of Perceptual Inference We will then conclude by speculating on the potential role of ambiguity in the appreciation of music. Finally, through a few musical illustrations and a computational model, we will suggest that perceptual ambiguity has been part of the composer’s repertoire for quite some time. For our purposes, we will emphasize recent studies, both behavioral and neuro-physiological, that have made use of so-called bistability illusions based on ambiguous stimuli. We will then describe the problem that ASA has to solve and what we know of the neural processes involved. We will first briefly discuss the potential of illusions to reveal fundamental principles of perception in general. The aim here is not to repeat those arguments, but rather to provide a brief review, aimed at the non-specialist and biased toward perceptual illusions: we argue that illusions seem to be both a powerful investigation tool for neuroscientists and an important expressive device for musicians. ASA has also been studied in a musical context, with the hypothesis that many of the established rules of polyphonic writing in the Western tradition may be underpinned by perceptual principles ( Huron, 2001). It has long been and still is one of the hot topics of auditory neuroscience, with its share of important advances and ongoing controversies (e.g., Shamma and Micheyl, 2010 for a review). ASA refers to the ability of human listeners to parse complex acoustic scenes into coherent objects, such as a single talker in the middle of a noisy babble, or, in music, a single melody in the midst of a large orchestra ( Bregman, 1990). More precisely, we address the issue of auditory scene analysis (ASA). This paper aims at highlighting some cross-connections that, we argue, may exist between auditory neuroscience, perceptual illusions, and music. We then put forward the opinion that some degree perceptual ambiguity may participate in our appreciation of music. By means of a few musical illustrations and by using a computational model inspired by neuro-physiological principles, we suggest that this relies on a detailed (if perhaps implicit) knowledge of the rules of ASA and of its inherent ambiguity. Interestingly, musicians will not always aim at making each physical source intelligible, but rather express one or more melodic lines with a small or large number of instruments. After reviewing some of those studies, we turn to music, which arguably provides some of the most complex acoustic scenes that a human listener will ever encounter. Recently, the neural mechanisms implicated in the transformation of ambiguous sensory information into coherent auditory scenes have been investigated using so-called bistability illusions (where an unchanging ambiguous stimulus evokes a succession of distinct percepts in the mind of the listener). However, the acoustical problem is ill-posed and it must be solved from noisy sensory input. In general, ASA uncovers the most likely physical causes that account for the waveform collected at the ears. The pivotal issue is auditory scene analysis (ASA), or what enables us to make sense of complex acoustic mixtures in order to follow, for instance, a single melody in the midst of an orchestra. In this review paper aimed at the non-specialist, we explore the use that neuroscientists and musicians have made of perceptual illusions based on ambiguity. 4 Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.3 Fondation Pierre-Gilles de Gennes pour la Recherche, Paris, France.2 Département D’études Cognitives, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France.1 Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and Université Paris Descartes, UMR 8158, Paris, France.Daniel Pressnitzer 1,2* Clara Suied 1,2,3 Shihab A.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |