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Lawrence M. Parsons
Cognitive Neuroscience, National Science Foundation, Washington, DC
Research Imaging Center, University of Texas Health Science Center

Music intricately and deeply engages the mind, and its mysterious effects have long been an object of fascination, speculation, and study. In the last decade, researchers in cognitive sciences, experimental psychology, behavioral neurology, ethology, and neuroimaging have significantly advanced the scientific understanding of many aspects of music, after a period of slower progress.

Musical experiences and skills are universal in all human societies, and possibly present in whale and bird, among other species. Human music, like human language, is complex, governed by rules, and acquired in developmental stages. Nearly all individuals acquire a basic musical appreciation and others going on to develop remarkably expert skills. Such evidence suggests that music is a consequence of biological evolution and is therefore associated with specific brain architecture.

This presentation will review recent scientific findings indicating that indeed there are discrete brain systems and computations for particular musical experiences and skills, and that these systems are distributed through the whole brain (i.e., left and right cerebral cortex, sub-cortex, and cerebellum). Distinct distributed brain systems serve different musical features such as timbre, harmony, melody, meter, tempo, dissonance, and consonance. Moreover, different musical skills are served by distinct neural systems. Interestingly, the apparent computational properties of specific brain areas implicated in music processing provide suggestive clues as to the evolution of music.

More specifically, neuroimaging evidence will be presented on the brain basis in expert and amateur musicians of skills such as sight-reading, piano performance of memorized pieces, and the vocal improvisation and perceptual discrimination of melody and harmony. Also discussed will be neuroimaging studies of the perception of the features of musical rhythm in musicians and non-musicians. Neurological and neuroimaging findings will be reviewed on the representation of pitch and melody. The relation between brain systems involved in comparable kinds of language and musical processing will also be considered.