17
EXPLORING THE
FUNCTIONAL
NEUROANATOMY OF
MUSIC PERFORMANCE,
PERCEPTION, AND
COMPREHENSION
.
Abstract
This chapter highlights findings by my colleagues and me in four neuroimaging and neurological
studies of music performance, perception, and comprehension. These investigations elucidate the
neural subsystems supporting musical pitch, melody, harmony, rhythm, tempo, meter, and duration.
In a positron emission tomography (PET) study of pianists, a memorized performance of a musical
piece was contrasted with that of scales to localize brain areas specifically supporting music. A
second PET study assayed brain areas subserving selectively the comprehension of harmony, melody,
and rhythm. Musicians sight-read a score while detecting specific melodic, harmonic, or rhythmic
errors in its heard performance. In a third PET study, musicians and nonmusicians discriminated
pairs of rhythms with respect to pattern, tempo, meter, or duration. Data in these studies implicated
the cerebellum in nonmotor, nonsomatic, sensory, or cognitive processing. In a fourth study, neuro-
logical patients with degeneration of the cerebellum were found to be impaired in fine discrimina-
tion of pitch. Overall, these data suggest that the neural systems underlying music are distributed
throughout the left and right cerebral and cerebellar hemispheres, with different aspects of music
processed by distinct neural circuits. Also discussed are key issues for interpreting the role in music
of brain areas implicated in neuroimaging studies.
Keywords:Cerebellum; Neuroimaging studies; Musical performance; Harmony; Melody;
Rhythm
In the last decade researchers in the cognitive sciences, experimental psychology, behavi-
oural neurology, ethology, and neuroimaging have significantly advanced the scientific
understanding of music, after a long period of slower progress.1–14It is not possible to
review these important and exciting advances here (see other chapters in this volume for a
sampling of such work). This chapter complements these advances by reviewing findings