Name: Yiren Ren

Ph.D. Dissertation Defense Meeting

Date: Monday, Nov 18th, 2024

Time: 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM

Location: Price Gilbert (Library) 4222

Zoom: https://gatech.zoom.us/j/95525390829?pwd=2M1adrA4M2WJtAPHp4USIeHCigL6bX.1

Meeting ID: 955 2539 0829

Passcode: 453806

Dissertation Chair/Advisor:

Thackery Brown, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech) 

Dissertation Committee Members:

Paul Verhaeghen, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)

Sashank Varma, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)

Lila Davachi, Ph.D. (Columbia University)

Elizebeth Race, Ph.D.  (Tufts University)

Title: Musical Context Facilitates Event Segmentation and Sequential Learning Through Interconnected Neural Networks and Strengthened Hippocampal Encoding

Abstract: Temporal order memory, the ability to recall the sequence of items or events, is a critical aspect of human cognition. It underpins key processes such as language comprehension, decision-making, and learning. Extracting patterns from continuous experiences helps individuals form an understanding of the temporal relationships between events, allowing for future predictions and adaptive behavior. Prior research highlights the role of context in shaping the encoding of the temporal order and distance between events. Music is a special event that can serve as a contextual backdrop for many memories, and importantly it has its own built-in sequence structure which can provide strong temporal cues to the listener. Thus it is plausible that music, when treated as a collection of contextual cues, enhances temporal order learning and modulates the neural mechanisms underlying this process. To test this, participants engaged in a statistical learning and event segmentation task, viewing streams of images to extract temporal patterns while undergoing fMRI scanning. Some of these streams were paired with familiar music, hypothesized to serve as a structured series of cues that “scaffolds” learning the temporal relationships of the visual information, while other streams were learned in silence. Replicating and extending my prior studies, behavioral results demonstrated that music facilitated both sequence learning and event boundary detection. Neuroimaging results revealed distinct activation patterns between music and control conditions, particularly within regions of interest in the medial temporal lobe (MTL), prefrontal cortex (PFC), and striatum. Functional connectivity analyses showed that music enhanced connectivity between the MTL and visual processing regions, as well as between the MTL and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Additionally, representational similarity analysis (RSA) of hippocampal activity revealed that music-modulated neural representations of item relationships both within and across event boundaries. The findings suggest that music strengthens associative binding within sequences and enhances the distinction between event boundaries, improving learning efficiency. This research contributes novel insights into cross-modal influences on memory, offering potential applications in educational and clinical contexts.