The Cognitive Neuroscience of Music

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paradigm was used requiring the subjects to indicate whether each new tone was ‘same’or
‘different’compared to two tones ago. In the phoneme task five different consonant-vowel
syllables were presented in the same way as in the tone memory task. AP musicians, nonAP
musicians and nonmusicians showed pronounced left-sided temporal lobe activation in
the phonemes vs control task comparison. Similar activations were seen in the tone mem-
ory condition for the AP musicians. However, the nonAP musicians as well as the nonmu-
sicians showed either symmetric or right-sided activation of the superior temporal lobe in
the tone memory task (Figure 24.7). It appeared that in AP musicians, the perception of
phonemes and tones is mediated by the same superior temporal lobe structures on the left
hemisphere. Nonabsolute pitch control subjects showed a differential involvement of the
superior temporal lobe depending on the stimuli. The left superior temporal lobe may be
a mediator of a specialized perception that enables the categorization of auditory stimuli.^57
Recently, Ohnishi et al.^64 were able to demonstrate the preferential involvement of the
PT in music perception in trained musicians, with particularly strong activation of the left
PT in AP musicians. Zatorre et al.^61 did find left hemisphere activation when contrasting

Figure 24.7Results of a fMRI experiment aimed to investigate the functional significance of the increased leftsided
anatomical PT asymmetry in AP musicians. Three groups of subjects were examined: AP musicians, nonAP musi-
cians, and nonmusicians. A phoneme memory task and a tone memory task were contrasted with a rest condition.
Suprathreshold voxels showing significant task related activity changes were superimposed on a representative
sagittal anatomical image of right and left hemisphere. AP musicians showed prominent left superior temporal lobe
activation during the tone memory task that was not seen in the other two groups. The cerebral activation pattern
of the phoneme memory task was similar between the three groups. (See Plate 23 in colour section.)

Phonemes vs control:

Group means (n= 8)

p = 0.0006

Tones vs control:

Group means (n= 8)

p = 0.0006

RL RL

A

B

C

A = AP musicians,

B = NonAP musicians,

C = Nonmusicians,