The stronger activation in the right auditory cortex for the performance of the Bach is
consistent with a variety of neuropsychological and neuroimaging results indicating that
areas in right auditory association cortex are involved in the reception and expression of
melody.31–36These findings suggest that some of the important areas specifically repre-
senting the higher-order representations of musical meaning, particular in performance,
lie in these regions of temporal cortex.
Unexpectedly, there was also strongly correlated activation during the performance of
the Bach (Figure 17.3) between right anterior temporal areas (BA 22, superior temporal
gyrus) and left posterior lateral cerebellum (r0.77,p0.001). Because left cerebellum
has its primary connectivity with right cerebral cortex, we hypothesize that during the per-
formance of the Bach, activation in right auditory cortex is related to that in left cerebel-
lum. There was a corresponding, but less robust, correlation between left temporal areas
and right posterior cerebellum. This contralateral coactivation of the auditory temporal
cortex and lateral cerebellum suggests that they form a distributed circuit of processing.
This cerebellar activity appears to be effectively dissociated from motor components and
thus appears to contradict the traditional assumption that the cerebellum possesses only
motor functions. It is unclear from the present data what function this temporal-cerebel-
lar circuit performs for higher-order representations of music. Interestingly, there is a
rapidly growing set of neuroimaging and neurological findings indicating that the cerebel-
lum possesses functions other than those classically attributed to it. These new data suggest
that the cerebellum is involved in some way in a variety of sensory and cognitive tasks.37–45
The present findings, and others discussed below, appear to extend this new view of
cerebellar function to the perceptual representation of music.
In summary, these data assist in outlining some of the neural systems that support
musical performance and understanding. These findings appear to confirm or extend otherneuro-
imaging and neurological observations and pave the way for new, more focused, research.250 Figure 17.2 Significant blood flow activations^21 in auditory (temporal) cortex specific to playing the Bach score
(red), specific to playing scales (blue), and common to both performances (cyan). These are logical contrasts of
Bach vs rest and scales vs rest shown in group-averaged PET images overlaid on anatomical magnetic resonance
images (MRIs). The z-values indicate the axial height of the brain volume relative to the Talairach and Tournoux
stereotactic atlas.^23 Throughout, left side of brain images shows the left side of the brain, and vice versa. (See Plate 6
in colour section.)