title: Jazz drummers recruit language-specific areas for the processing of rhythmic structure.
abstract: Rhythm is a central characteristic of music and speech, the most important domains of human communication using acoustic signals. Here, we investigated how rhythmical patterns in music are processed in the human brain, and, in addition, evaluated the impact of musical training on rhythm processing. Using fMRI, we found that deviations from a rule-based regular rhythmic structure activated the left planum temporale together with Broca's area and its right-hemispheric homolog across subjects, that is, a network also crucially involved in the processing of harmonic structure in music and the syntactic analysis of language. Comparing the BOLD responses to rhythmic variations between professional jazz drummers and musical laypersons, we found that only highly trained rhythmic experts show additional activity in left-hemispheric supramarginal gyrus, a higher-order region involved in processing of linguistic syntax. This suggests an additional functional recruitment of brain areas usually dedicated to complex linguistic syntax processing for the analysis of rhythmical patterns only in professional jazz drummers, who are especially trained to use rhythmical cues for communication.
authors.affiliation: Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics, MR-Center, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Marcus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Herdener
authors.forename: Thierry
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Humbel
authors.forename: Fabrizio
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Esposito
authors.forename: Benedikt
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Habermeyer
authors.forename: Katja
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Cattapan-Ludewig
authors.forename: Erich
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Seifritz
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000098:blood supply / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D007802:Language; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009146:Music; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood; D010507:Periodicity; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D010100:Oxygen