Neural mechanisms involved in the oral representation of percussion music: an fMRI study.
Numerous music cultures use nonsense syllables to represent percussive sounds. Covert reciting of these syllable sequences along with percussion music aids active listeners in keeping track of music. Owing to the acoustic dissimilarity between the representative syllables and the referent percussive sounds, associative learning is necessary for the oral representation of percussion music. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore the neural processes underlying oral rehearsals of music. There were four music conditions in the experiment: (1) passive listening to unlearned percussion music, (2) active listening to learned percussion music, (3) active listening to the syllable representation of (2), and (4) active listening to learned melodic music. Our results specified two neural substrates of the association mechanisms involved in the oral representation of percussion music. First, information integration of heard sounds and the auditory consequences of subvocal rehearsals may engage the right planum temporale during active listening to percussion music. Second, mapping heard sounds to articulatory and laryngeal gestures may engage the left middle premotor cortex.
Tsai
Chen-Gia
CG
Graduate Institute of Musicology, National Taiwan University, Taiwan.
Chen
Chien-Chung
CC
Chou
Tai-Li
TL
Chen
Jyh-Horng
JH
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009146:Music; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*