Brain imaging studies of musical perception and musical imagery

Functional imaging of the brain in normal volunteers has become an important part of cognitive neuroscience. These techniques have been applied in our laboratory to study two musically relevant processes: melodic perception and musical imagery. Studies of melodic processing implicate the auditory cortex, particularly in the right hemisphere, as being important in extracting musically relevant stimulus features from a tonal sequence. The retention of specific pitches within a sequence has been shown to recruit a complex network of regions in both cerebral hemispheres, with an important contribution from interactions between right frontal-lobe and temporal-lobe regions. Studies of musical imagery have revealed that the secondary auditory cortex may be active even in the absence of acoustic stimulation, when people imagine a familiar melody. Moreover, the pattern of brain activity associated with listening to an actual tune is remarkably similar to that associated with imagining it. When the tunes in question do not contain any verbal associations, a more important contribution of right auditory cortex is once again observed. These studies, together with more traditional lesion techniques and other imaging and physiological methods, hold great promise for understanding the neural basis for musical processes.