pitch perception in musicians with and without absolute pitch, however, in the critical
comparison, only a dorsal posterior frontal region became significant.
Pantev et al.^11 found evidence for an increased auditory cortical representation of piano
tones in highly skilled musicians which was not seen for pure tones. There was a correla-
tion between the enhanced representation of tones in the auditory cortex and age of com-
mencement of musical training. No significant difference was seen between musicians with
and without absolute pitch. This may have been due to the fact that mainly the N1 which
occurs up to 100 ms after tone onset was examined. In a subsequent report, a functional
difference was found between musicians with and without absolute pitch. AP musicians
showed a distinct activity more posterior in the left superior temporal lobe than the non-
musicians.^69
Implicit musical ability of the human brain
Although there are differences in the way that musical stimuli are processed between musi-
cians and nonmusicians, it has also become clear over the last years that nonmusicians pos-
sess some implicit ability to process musical stimuli. This then leads to the question
whether the differences between musicians and nonmusicians observed in neurophysio-
logical studies are either due to training and experience in processing complex auditory
stimuli or are due to innate anatomical or functional differences.
Although enhanced cortical responses in the N1^11 as well as in the transient N1/P2 com-
plex have been seen comparing musicians with nonmusicians, there have been other stud-
ies showing that early cortical responses to musical stimuli (such as contour violations,
etc.) may be processed similarly between musicians and nonmusicians.^70 Koelsch and col-
leagues^63 examined early brain potentials in subjects listening to violations of musical syn-
tax. The mapping of these changes indicated that neural activity covaried with these events
in regions of the brain that were previously thought to play an important role in language
processing.^71 Furthermore, these results were obtained in naïve subjects without explicit
musical knowledge. On the contrary, Ruesseler et al.^72 showed that professional musicians
exhibited a mismatch negativity (MMN), a frontal negative wave in the event-related
potential (ERP), for tones anticipated by as little as 20 ms within a series of regularly spaced
tones while nonmusicians did not.
Thus, there is evidence for an implicit ability of the human brain to process musical
stimuli. It will need to be determined in future studies how training and experience
changes the neural elements subserving the perceptual processing of musical stimuli and
subserving the planning and execution of highly complex motor action requiring the integ-
ration of multimodal sensory information and precise monitoring and feedback.
Summary
Musicians are an ideal human model to investigate possible functional and structural neu-
ral changes due to the acquisition and continuous practice of complex perceptions and
actions. Experimental animal studies strongly support the existence of microstructural
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