Activation of premotor vocal areas during musical discrimination.
Two same/different discrimination tasks were performed by amateur-musician subjects in this functional magnetic resonance imaging study: Melody Discrimination and Harmony Discrimination. Both tasks led to activations not only in classic working memory areas--such as the cingulate gyrus and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex--but in a series of premotor areas involved in vocal-motor planning and production, namely the somatotopic mouth region of the primary and lateral premotor cortices, Broca's area, the supplementary motor area, and the anterior insula. A perceptual control task involving passive listening alone to monophonic melodies led to activations exclusively in temporal-lobe auditory areas. These results show that, compared to passive listening tasks, discrimination tasks elicit activation in vocal-motor planning areas.
Brown
Steven
S
Research Imaging Center, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, USA. s_brown@sfu.ca
Martinez
Michael J
MJ
D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination / Q000502:physiology; D033182:Intention; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009146:Music; D046709:Pattern Recognition, Physiological / Q000502:physiology*; D010897:Pitch Discrimination / Q000502:physiology*; D012016:Reference Values