The Cognitive Neuroscience of Music

the level of hundreds of milliseconds or seconds. Higher-order structure might itself be
subdivided into ‘local patterns’ (e.g. single intervals) and ‘global patterns’ (e.g. contour) as
used by Peretz and others.3,4For present purposes, higher-order structure simply means
any structure formed by patterns of the features in individual notes. This categorical dis-
tinction of temporal structure is convenient when considering processing relevant to
music. This is not the only way of considering the temporal processing of sound. In par-
ticular, I would point out approaches based on the modulation transfer function. Here,
responses to modulation of the sound amplitude or frequency are considered as continu-
ousfunctions of modulation rate. This approach has been used in human psychophysical
work,5–8evoked-potential work,9,10and functional imaging work.11,12
In the human auditory system much work on mechanisms of temporal processing, par-
ticularly in the case of music, has focused on the auditory cortex and cortical networks
involving the auditory cortices. However, the ascending auditory pathway (Figure 11.2)
affords an extensive mechanism for the processing of complex signals before the cortex is
reached. Subcortical mechanisms for the processing of temporally complex sound in
the form of continuous modulation have been investigated in animals13–15and in man.^11
Little work has been carried out on the processing of segmented sound closer to music in
the ascending pathway, especially in man. Because of the extensive cross-connections in the
auditory pathway, bilateral lesions of the ascending pathway are needed to produce tem-
poral deficits. Such lesions are rarely compatible with life, but do occur, for example, in multi-
ple sclerosis.^16 Imaging of human auditory brain stem processing is technically limited in
functional imaging techniques, including PET, fMRI, and MEG. I point this out primarily to
declare an open mind about the existence of ascending processing systems for sound
sequences such as music. The concentration in this chapter on cortical mechanisms simply
reflects a lack of data, rather than any a priori limitation on such processing in the ascend-
ing pathway. Another area of future interest is cortical ‘molding’ of auditory processing in
the ascending pathway that has been demonstrated in other species such as the bat.^17

     169

Semantic processing

Symbolic use of auditory ‘tokens’ derived from complex sound processing

Complex processing

Stabilized representation of temporal, spectral, and spatial patterns

Simple processing

Neural encoding of simple temporal, spectral, and spatial information

Figure 11.1Modular representation of complex sound perception relevant to music.