The Neural Locus of Temporal Structure and Expectancies in Music: Evidence From Functional Neuroimaging At 3 Tesla

Abstract

The neuroanatomical correlates of temporal structure and expectancies in music were investigated using a unique stimulus manipulation involving scrambled music. The experiment compared brain responses (using functional magnetic resonance imaging) while participants listened to classical music and scrambled versions of that same music. The scrambled versions disrupted musical structure while holding low-level musical attributes constant, including such psychoacoustic parameters as pitch, loudness, and timbre. Comparing music to its scrambled counterpart, we found focal activation in the pars orbitalis region (Brodmann Area 47) of the left inferior frontal cortex, a region that has been previously closely associated with the processing of linguistic structure in spoken and signed language, and additional activation in the right hemisphere homologue of that area. We speculate that this particular region of inferior frontal cortex may be more generally responsible for processing fine-structured stimuli that evolve over time, not merely those that are linguistic.

Functional specificity for high-level linguistic processing in the human brain

“…Our data are difficult to reconcile with the widely favored hypothesis that this region is engaged in domain general cognitive control (8, 17); although we do see a weak response to the Stroop task in this region, we find no hint of activation for either of the other two cognitive control tasks [the MSIT task (39) and its variant, verbal MSIT (vMSIT)]. Furthermore, although this region does respond more strongly to intact than scrambled musical stimuli (consistent with some previous claims) (21), the response to intact music is barely above the fixation baseline (and lower than the response to the language localizer control task), making it difficult to argue that this region supports general structural processing of complex stimuli that unfold over time (9,20,21).…”

“…More generally, the current data pose a challenge for hypotheses that brain regions that support high-level aspects of language also (i) represent and manipulate exact quantity information (7,22,23), (ii) contribute to language processing through domain general working memory or cognitive control mechanisms (8,17), or (iii) process structured sequences unfolding over time regardless of their content (9,16,20).…”

“…Nonlinguistic tasks. In experiment 1 (math), participants (n = 11) saw a number (11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30) and added three addends to it (of sizes two to four or six to eight in the easy and hard conditions, respectively). † After each trial, participants had to choose the correct sum in a two-choice forced choice question (the incorrect sum deviated by one to two).…”

“…In contrast, prior neuroimaging work has suggested that brain regions that support language-especially regions on the lateral surface of the left frontal lobe-also support nonlinguistic functions (7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23). However, the neuroimaging claims are based largely on observations of activation for a nonlanguage task in or near a general brain region previously implicated in language (e.g., Broca's area), without a direct demonstration of overlap of linguistic and nonlinguistic activations in the same subjects.…”

The perception of harmonic triads: an fMRI study

“…As reported by Khalfa et al (2005), Koelsch et al (2005), and Levitin and Menon (2005), emotions based on anticipation in musical progressions evoke IFC responses primarily in the right hemisphere. Presumably, because we used two-chord progressions as stimuli, this area was also activated in our study.…”