The Cognitive Neuroscience of Music

Plate 22 Preliminary findings of a voxel-by-voxel morphometric study comparing a group of 15 male musicians
with 15 male nonmusicians. Three axial slices show significant differences (p0.05 corrected) between musicians
and nonmusicians superimposed on corresponding T1-weighted structural images. Yellow and red voxels indicate
more gray-matter concentration in the musicians, blue voxels indicate more gray matter concentration in the
nonmusicians.

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,

Plate 23 Results 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
musicians, 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 repre-
sentative 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.