Abstract
Pitch discrimination tasks typically engage the superior temporal gyrus and the right inferior frontal gyrus. It is currently unclear whether these regions are equally involved in the processing of incongruous notes in melodies, which requires the representation of musical structure (tonality) in addition to pitch discrimination. To this aim, 14 participants completed two tasks while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging, one in which they had to identify a pitch change in a series of non-melodic repeating tones and a second in which they had to identify an incongruous note in a tonal melody. In both tasks, the deviants activated the right superior temporal gyrus. A contrast between deviants in the melodic task and deviants in the non-melodic task (melodic > non-melodic) revealed additional activity in the right inferior parietal lobule. Activation in the inferior parietal lobule likely represents processes related to the maintenance of tonal pitch structure in working memory during pitch discrimination.
Highlights
The human auditory system is highly sensitive to pitch, and many studies have documented how the brain processes pitch change
The purpose was to determine which brain areas are activated uniquely or preferentially by deviants in the musical context, which theoretically requires the processing of musical structure in addition to pitch change detection
Consistent with our hypotheses and previous research, we found significant activation in the right superior temporal gyrus (STG) during pitch violations in both melodic and non-melodic contexts, (e.g. [3,5])
Summary
The human auditory system is highly sensitive to pitch, and many studies have documented how the brain processes pitch change. The standard approach has been the oddball paradigm, characterized by the presentation of sequences of repetitive identical auditory stimuli that are infrequently interrupted by a deviant stimulus that differs in pitch. Using this paradigm, electroencephalographic (EEG) and magnetoencephalographic (MEG) studies have found that the brain’s automatic response to deviant stimuli is indexed by a response called the mismatch negativity (MMN) [1]. The P3a is thought to originate from frontal attention-orienting mechanisms as well as from the processing of novelty, whereas the P3b
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