Name:Mohammadreza Edalati

School/Affiliation:Université de Picardie Jules Verne

Co-Authors:Maya Psaris, Alban Gallard, Arthur Foulon, Fabrice Wallois, Laurel J. Trainor, Sahar Moghimi

Virtual or In-person:Virtual

Short Bio:

I’m a postdoctoral researcher based in France, studying auditory rhythm perception and neural synchronization. My work explores how neonates' brain encodes the rhythmic hierarchy across development.

Abstract:

Perceiving time intervals and structure of rhythmic patterns are of fundamental developmental importance, for instance for language, music, and social skills. Rhythm experience starts very early, during the prenatal period of development with the auditory system becoming functional as young as 24-25 weeks gestational age. We have recently shown that the neural following of auditory rhythm develops progressively during the third trimester of gestation, and that importantly its emergence might be tempo dependent (Saadatmehr et al. 2024, J Neuroscience). In the current study, we further address the impact of tempo on neural following of the rhythmic structure comparing neural responses of newborns to those of adults in a high-density EEG study. To address the impact of tempo on neural synchronization at two stages of neurodevelopment, we used the same repeating 6-beat ambiguous rhythmic pattern at two tempi, with the beat frequency equal to 3.33 Hz and 6.66 Hz for slow and fast tempi, respectively. We found stronger neural synchronization at the faster frequency in neonates, while adults exhibited stronger neural synchronization at the slower frequency. We conclude that tempo (cycle duration) plays an important role in the neural coding of the rhythmic hierarchy at the early stage of neurodevelopment and that neural synchronization to slower periodicity improves with age. These results shed light on early neural capacities for coding temporal regularities and together with our previous studies highlight the fast evolution of rhythm processing during this phase of neurodevelopment.