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1. Subcortical responses to music and speech are alike while cortical responses diverge

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-50438-0  

   Shan, Tong; Cappelloni, Madeline S; Maddox, Ross K (January 2024, Scientific Reports)

   Music and speech are encountered daily and are unique to human beings. Both are transformed by the auditory pathway from an initial acoustical encoding to higher level cognition. Studies of cortex have revealed distinct brain responses to music and speech, but differences may emerge in the cortex or may be inherited from different subcortical encoding. In the first part of this study, we derived the human auditory brainstem response (ABR), a measure of subcortical encoding, to recorded music and speech using two analysis methods. The first method, described previously and acoustically based, yielded very different ABRs between the two sound classes. The second method, however, developed here and based on a physiological model of the auditory periphery, gave highly correlated responses to music and speech. We determined the superiority of the second method through several metrics, suggesting there is no appreciable impact of stimulus class (i.e., music vs speech) on the way stimulus acoustics are encoded subcortically. In this study’s second part, we considered the cortex. Our new analysis method resulted in cortical music and speech responses becoming more similar but with remaining differences. The subcortical and cortical results taken together suggest that there is evidence for stimulus-class dependent processing of music and speech at the cortical but not subcortical level. 

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2. Novel Disturbance Regimes and Ecological Responses

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   Turner, Monica G.; Seidl, Rupert (November 2023, Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics)

   Many natural disturbances have a strong climate forcing, and concern is rising about how ecosystems will respond to disturbance regimes to which they are not adapted. Novelty can arise either as attributes of the disturbance regime (e.g., frequency, severity, duration) shift beyond their historical ranges of variation or as new disturbance agents not present historically emerge. How much novelty ecological systems can absorb and whether changing disturbance regimes will lead to novel outcomes is determined by the ecological responses of communities, which are also subject to change. Powerful conceptual frameworks exist for anticipating consequences of novel disturbance regimes, but these remain challenging to apply in real-world settings. Nonlinear relationships (e.g., tipping points, feedbacks) are of particular concern because of their disproportionate effects. Future research should quantify the rise of novelty in disturbance regimes and assess the capacity of ecosystems to respond to these changes. Novel disturbance regimes will be potent catalysts for ecological change. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, Volume 54 is November 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates. 

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   Hector, Tobias E.; Hoang, Kim L.; Li, Jingdi; King, Kayla C. (July 2022, Trends in Ecology & Evolution)
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   Pressler, Yamina; Moore, John C.; Cotrufo, M. Francesca (October 2018, Oikos)
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   David, Lisa; Harmon, Alice C.; Chen, Sixue (May 2019, Plant Signaling & Behavior)

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