Appendix 3.05 Musical material – The Neurosciences and Music
Musical material NM I NM II NM III: Artificial stimuli, Acoustic sounds, and Recorded music.
Artificial stimuli in NM I NM II and NM III
23 studies apply sinus tones as stimuli, 46 studies apply synthesized material. Some noteworthy papers are
the following:
Investigations and discussions related to sinus tones
Sinus tones, NM I
Tervaniemi and Huotilainen (NM I no.2, pp. 29-39) and Trainor et al. (NM I no. 55, pp. 506-513) find
evidence that sinus tones and musical tones evoke different cortical responses.
Griffiths et al. (NM I no. 3, pp. 40-49) employ rippled noise instead of sinus tones to evoke the perception
of pitch.
Lopez et al. (NM I no. 10, pp. 124-130) state in their introduction that ”the need for quantifiable data implies
the use of experimental protocols that necessarily address only specific aspects of music.”
Jones (NM I no. 30, pp. 218-233) strongly recommends studies of naturalistic musical sounds.
Sinus tones, NM II
Tramo et al. (NM II no. 15, pp. 148-174) discuss sinus-tone and harmonic-tone pitch perception in the
auditory cortex.
Sinus tones, NM III
Tervaniemi (NM III no. 18, pp. 151-156) reviews MEG and EEG studies which show different responses to
sinus tones and to instrumental tones.
Investigations and discussions related to synthesized material
Synthesized material, NM I
Vignolo (NM I no. 4, pp. 50-57) reports studies employing environmental sound as well as synthesized
tones.
Roads (NM I no. 35, pp. 272-281) discusses the microtemporal properties of synthesized and acoustic
sounds.
Krumhansl (NM I no. 47, pp. 414-428) has conducted an ecological survey of initial melodic patterns in a
corpus of Western melodies.
Synthesized material, NM II
Schneider et al. (NM II no. 40, pp. 387-395) discuss two different modes of pitch perception in groups of
musicians, related to their musical instrument preference.
Synthesized material, NM III
Palmer et al. (NM III no. 68, pp. 470-480) have investigated the ERP responses to timbres in different
contexts, which influence the listener’s expectations.