The Cognitive Neuroscience of Music

music.^64 Results of metanalysis of the type just mentioned should clearly help in drawing

maps of the structure–function relationships known for language and music.

Semantics, melody, and harmony

A starting point in the study of the neurophysiological basis of language processing was the

discovery of the N400 component by Kutas and Hillyard.^65 This negative component of the

event-related brain potentials (ERPs), peaking around 400 ms after word onset, is elicited

by words that are semantically unexpected, incongruous, and within a linguistic context

(e.g. ‘The pizza was too hot to cry’; Figure 18.1). Further results have shown that N400

amplitude is modulated by semantic priming, so that an unexpected word related to the

best sentence completion (e.g. ‘drink’ when the expected word is ‘eat’; Figure 18.1) elicits a

smaller N400 than a completely unexpected word (e.g. ‘cry’^66 ). These results, together with

those issued from a large number of experiments, have led to the consensus that the N400

is a good index of the integration process of a word within its linguistic context.

The first experiments that we designed were aimed at finding out whether an N400 com-

ponent would also be elicited when melodically and harmonically unexpected notes were

presented within a melodic context.67–69We presented both familiar and unfamiliar

monodic musical phrases to musicians and nonmusicians. The familiar melodies were cho-

sen from the classical repertoire of Western occidental music from the eighteenth and nine-

teenth centuries, and the unfamiliar musical phrases were composed by a musician

following the rules of tonal harmony (Figure 18.2). These melodies were ended by the con-

gruous or most expected note, by a note out of the tonality of the musical phrase (non

diatonic incongruities perceived as wrong notes), or by a note within the tonality but not

278     

Figure 18.1ERPs elicited by final sentence words at the central recording site (Cz) for congruous and incongru-
ous words and for incongruous words that are semantically related to the best sentence completion. The ampli-
tude of the negative component, peaking at 400 ms postfinal word onset (N400) is largest for incongruous words,
intermediate for incongruous words related to the best sentence completion, and smallest for congruous words.
In this and subsequent figures, amplitude (V) is represented on the ordinate, with negative voltage up, and time
(ms) on the abscissa. (Adapted from Ref. 66.)

Language

The pizza was too hot to...

Cry

Drink

Eat

Congruous

Incongruous

Incongruous related

5 μV

0 200 400 600 800 ms