Musical Stimuli Research Articles

Beat perception ability and instructions to synchronize influence gait when walking to music-based auditory cues

Synchronizing gait to music-based auditory cues (rhythmic auditory stimulation) is a strategy used to manage gait impairments in a variety of neurological conditions, including Parkinson’s disease. However, knowledge of how to individually optimize music-based cues is limited. The purpose of this study was to investigate how instructions to synchronize with auditory cues influences gait outcomes among healthy young adults with either good or poor beat perception ability. 65 healthy adults walked to metronome and musical stimuli with high and low levels of perceived groove (how much it induces desire to move) and familiarity at a tempo equivalent to their self-selected walking pace. Participants were randomized to instruction conditions: (i) synchronized: match footsteps with the beat, or (ii) free-walking: walk comfortably. Participants were classified as good or poor beat perceivers using the Beat Alignment Test. In this study, poor beat perceivers show better balance-related parameters (stride width and double-limb support time) when they are not instructed to synchronize their gait with cues (versus when synchronization was required). Good beat perceivers, in contrast, were better when instructed to synchronize gait (versus when no synchronization was required). Changes in stride length and velocity were influenced by musical properties, in particular the perceived ‘groove’ (greater stride length and velocity with high- versus low-groove cues) and, in some cases, this interacted with beat perception ability. The results indicate that beat perception ability and instructions to synchronize indeed influence spatiotemporal gait parameters when walking to music- and metronome-based rhythmic auditory stimuli. Importantly, these results suggest that both low groove cues and instructing poor beat perceivers to synchronize may interfere with performance while walking, thus potentially impacting both empirical and clinical outcomes.

Variations in Food Acceptability with Respect to Pitch, Tempo, and Volume Levels of Background Music.

This study aimed to determine whether pitch, tempo, and volume levels of music stimuli affect sensory perception and acceptance of foods. A traditional music piece was arranged into versions at two pitches, two tempos, and two volumes. For each session, chocolate and bell peppers were presented for consumption under three sound conditions: 1)upper or 2)lower level with respect to each of the three music elements, and 3)silence. Over three sessions, participants evaluated flavor intensity, pleasantness of flavor, texture impression, and overall impression of food samples, in addition to the pleasantness and stimulation evoked by the music stimuli. Results showed that lower-pitched and louder music stimuli increased hedonic impressions of foods compared to their respective counterparts and/or the silent condition. While the effects of music element levels on hedonic impressions differed with the type of food consumed, the participants liked the foods more when music stimuli were perceived as more pleasant and stimulating. Flavor was perceived as more intense when participants were more stimulated by the music samples. Although a specific element of music stimuli was manipulated, perceptions of other elements also varied, leading to large variations in the music-evoked pleasantness and stimulation. In conclusion, the findings provide empirical evidence that hedonic impressions of foods may be influenced by emotions evoked by music selections varying in music element levels, but it should be also noted that the influences were food-dependent and not pronounced.

Electroencephalographic Study of Gamma Rhythm in the Autobiographical Memory Evocation Mediated by Musical Stimuli

Listening to music, or part of it, may stir the memory of a past moment, along with its associated emotions, such occurrences are known as autobiographical memories. Electroencephalographic (EEG) studies have shown alterations in memory recall and musical processing. However, no research was found showing a relation among music, autobiographical memories and associated emotions. The purpose of this study was to identify cortical areas involved in the evocation of autobiographical memory (associated with positive and negative events) mediated by musical stimuli. For that, gamma rhythm was analyzed through EEG recordings performed by 45 male volunteers while they were submitted to two stimuli: 1) the music capable of recalling memories associated to a positive event; 2) the music capable of evoking memories associated to a negative event. Gamma band analysis was used in search of greater brain electrical activity. As results, researchers observed increased activity in right brain hemisphere during the musical processing, besides its hypoactivation when volunteers were submitted to musical stimuli related to memories of negative events.

State of the art in musicogenic epilepsy: a review of the scientific literature

Musicogenic epilepsy is a type of reflex complex epilepsy and is evoked by musical stimulus, specially music with high emotional content to the patient. To review the state of the art of the musicogenic epilepsy in the current literature. We have made an analysis of all the patients that have been described with musicogenic epilepsy. Among the most studied variables we have included: the nature of the sound that evoke the seizure, the musical education of the patients, the changes between the different neurophysiological and neuroimaging techniques, the most frequent location and the hemispheric side implication in seizures, and comparison between the different neuroimaging techniques. Most of the patients had seizures when they were listening to music with emotional content. The right temporal lobe is the most affected area in this type of epilepsy. In these studies the structural neuroimaging were normal in most of the patients. Musicogenic epilepsy is reflex and complex and music with emotional content to the patients is the most frequent stimulus that evoke this type of epilepsy. The right temporal lobe is the most affected area. It seems that exists a correlation between emotional and auditory cerebral processing networks.

Analysis of EEG Signal for Relativity between Musical Stimulus and Concentration for Memorization

Analysis of EEG Signal for Relativity between Musical Stimulus and Concentration for Memorization

Effect of Compression on Musical Sound Quality in Cochlear Implant Users.

Cochlear implant (CI) users frequently report poor sound quality while listening to music, although the specific parameters responsible for this loss of sound quality remain poorly understood. Audio compression, which reduces the dynamic range (DR) for a given sound, is a ubiquitous component of signal processing used by both CI and hearing aid technology. However, the relative impact of compression for acoustic and electric hearing on music perception has not been well studied, an important consideration especially given that most compression algorithms in CIs were developed to optimize speech perception. The authors hypothesized that normal-hearing (NH) listeners would detect increased levels of compression more easily than CI users, but that both groups would perceive a loss of sound quality with increasing compression levels. The present study utilizes the Cochlear Implant-MUltiple Stimulus with Hidden Reference and Anchor to evaluate the listener sensitivity to increasing levels of compression applied to music stimuli. The Cochlear Implant-MUltiple Stimulus with Hidden Reference and Anchor is a tool used to assess relative changes in the perceived sound quality of music across increasingly degraded listening conditions, in both CI and NH subjects. In this study, the authors applied multiple iterations of an aggressive compression algorithm to the music clips using Adobe Audition. The test conditions included 1, 3, 5, and 20 iterations sound tokens, with the 20-iteration samples serving as the Anchor stimuli. The compressed excerpts were 5 sec in length, with five clips for each of the five common musical genres (i.e., Classical, Jazz, Country, Rock, and Hip-Hop). Subjects were also presented with a Reference excerpt, which was the original music clip without any additional compression applied. CI recipients (n = 7, 11 ears) and NH listeners (n = 10) were asked to rate the sound quality of additionally compressed music as compared to the Reference. Although both NH and CI groups could detect sound quality differences as a function of compression level, the discriminatory ability of the CI group was blunted compared to the NH group. The CI group had less variability in their responses and overall demonstrated reduced sensitivity to deterioration caused by excessive levels of compression. On average, the CI group rated the Anchor condition as only "Slightly worse" than the Reference. The music clips that were most affected by the compression were from Jazz and Hip-Hop genres and less so for Rock and Country clips. Corollary to this was a small but statistically significant impact of DR of the music clips on sound quality ratings, with narrower DR showing an association with poorer ratings. These results indicate that CI users exhibit less sensitivity to sound quality changes in music attributable to high levels of compression. These findings may account for another contributing factor to the generally poor music perception observed in CI users, particularly when listening to commercially recorded music.

Tripolar Stimulation Improves Polyphonic Pitch Detection in Cochlear Implant Users.

Cochlear implant (CI) users struggle with pitch perception, particularly for polyphonic stimuli. Tripolar (TP) stimulation has been proposed as a way to mitigate the broad spread of neural excitation observed in traditional monopolar (MP) stimulation, thereby potentially improving perception of polyphony. Prospective cohort study. Tertiary academic center. Eleven postlingually deafened adults with Advanced Bionics HiRes 90K CIs. We performed pitch ranking and polyphonic pitch detection testing under MP and TP configurations. To assess pitch ranking, users were asked to identify the higher pitch between two notes. In polyphonic pitch detection, users were asked to distinguish between single-pitch tones and two-pitch tones. Two-pitch stimuli consisted of one pitch of three base frequencies (392, 523, 740 Hz) and a second pitch between 1 and 12 semitones above the base frequency. Pitch performance was analyzed as a function of current delivery mode (tripolar vs. monopolar), with smaller semitone interval pitch resolution indicating better performance. In pitch ranking tasks, TP configuration did not confer an advantage over MP stimulation. In polyphonic perception, however, tripolar stimulation improved performance in lower frequencies and resulted in statistically significant (p < 0.05) improvement at the highest base frequency, 740 Hz. These data suggest that TP configuration may confer an advantage in the perception of polyphonic pitch, which may not be observed in monophonic pitch ranking tasks. Since music is typically polyphonic, such data offer approaches toward improving perception of real-world musical stimuli.

Auditory ERPs and EEG abnormal findings in children with specific language impairment (SLI)

ERPs are under study in preschool children with specific language impairment (SLI). To characterize auditory ERPs and EEG features in preschool children. We studied 14 female and 18 male children (mean age 4.2 yrs). ERPs were obtained off-line from a continuous EEG recordings and with three different odd-ball paradigma of stimuli: syllabic, musical and natural (animal voice); automatic and manual, single sweep, average were compared; in five were detected focal fronto-temporal EEG paroxysms. Control group ERP: with syllabic and musical stimuli four stable peak were recorded: P1, N1, N2 and P2; with natural sound only P1 and N1. SLI patients: P1 peak increased in latency (148 ms; control 124 ms), but the P2 latency (398 ms) was shortened and stable compared with controls (419 ms). ERPs abnormalities suggested primary sensory cortical process disturbances, while precognitive and cognitive ERPs components were less affected. ERPs of the five patients with EEG abnormalities did not differ with the other patients, surprisingly indicating that EEG focal abnormalities did not affect language function and development. Nonetheless, to clarify the role of EEG focal paroxysms on SLI further integrated investigations are suggested given the poor spatial resolution of the method we used.

Juicio emocional y procesamiento musical en pacientes con Demencia Tipo Alzheimer

La música produce reacciones emocionales intensas, similares a las que producen otros estímulos. La capacidad de procesar estímulos musicales requiere de varios componentes de procesamiento e involucra diversas regiones del cerebro. Los pacientes con Demencia Tipo Alzheimer (DTA) presentan alteraciones en la memoria episódica y deficiencias en el procesamiento emocional de los estímulos visuales. El objetivo de este estudio es llevar a cabo una revisión bibliográfica evaluativa para determinar si existen disociaciones entre el juicio emocional musical y el procesamiento de otros aspectos musicales en DTA y brindar una explicación desde los modelos teóricos y bases anatómicas implicadas.&#x0D; Los estudios mostraron que los pacientes con DTA muestran un rendimiento deficiente en algunos aspectos del procesamiento musical, como el global. A pesar de eso, se conserva el procesamiento emocional de las melodías. El componente de procesamiento emocional se conservaría en DTA. Y las áreas activadas son similares a los sujetos sanos, como el giro cingulado, el cerebelo y las áreas frontales. La música parece apuntar a procesos y áreas que se conservan en DTA. Esta revisión muestra la importancia de estudiar las emociones en la música, centrándose en lo que se conserva en DTA. Esta podría ser la clave para explicar la conservación relativa de la memoria musical en esta patología y para desarrollar tratamientos basados ​​en la música.

The effect of a rhythmic pulse on the heart rate: Little evidence for rhythmical ‘entrainment’ and ‘synchronization’

In this study, we investigate the influence of musical tempo on the heart rate. Previous studies showed ambiguous results. Two effects are considered: first, an adaption of the heart rate frequency to the tempo of a musical stimulus (‘entrainment’) and second, the phase synchronization between the stimulus-onset and the R-waves in the ECG (‘synchronization’). A regulatory feedback loop was programmed, which constantly measured the actual heart rate. A simple Djembé-beat was used as a musical stimulus and coupled to the actual heart rate in real-time. To test for ‘entrainment’ effects, we adapted the tempo of the stimulus in real-time to the actual heart rate by increasing the rate 25%, 40% or 55% over the baseline tempo. To test for ‘synchronization’ effects, we presented the stimulus in a constant tempo, tracking the actual heart rate of the test person. Based on circular statistics, results showed no evidence for ‘entrainment’ or ‘synchronization’ effects of the stimulus on the heart rate. Overall, reactions to the trigger pulse were characterized by a high degree of interindividual differences. Thus, we conclude that there is no direct and simple correlation between the musical tempo and the HR contrary to what is often suggested in everyday psychology.

Percepcja muzyki – słuchanie muzyki czy słuchanie dźwięków

Listening to music is usually understood as perception of a stimulus of a particular kind which, however, does not differ in any special way from listening to other, non-musical sound stimuli. Numerous observations show, however, that the majority of musical stimuli is perceived in a particular manner, suggesting that alongside the cognitive strategies used in the perception of all kinds of sound stimuli, listening to music also activates music-specific cognitive mechanisms. On the other hand, a large section of musical artistic output of the Western culture in the twentieth century became an exceptional phenomenon, both in historical and geographical perspective, in that it abandoned the organisation of the sound structure of music on the basis of pitch-rhythm relationships. From the psychological perspective, this exceptionality consists above all in omitting, during the perceptual processing of this kind of music, of some of the perceptual cognitive structures characteristically involved in the perception of traditionally conceived melodic structures. For a full understanding of the ways of perceiving music it is thus necessary to apply contemporary knowledge of the specific features of the human cognitive system and its evolutionary sources. The aim of the article is to presenta number of various cognitive mechanisms of different evolutionary age which are involved in the perception of music, as well as an attempt to indicate their differentiated participation in the creation of the aesthetic experience of different kinds of music.

EEG spectral powers and source localization in depressing, sad, and fun music videos focusing on gender differences.

Previously, gender-specific affective responses have been shown using neurophysiological signals. The present study intended to compare the differences in electroencephalographic (EEG) power spectra and EEG brain sources between men and women during the exposure of affective music video stimuli. The multi-channel EEG signals of 15 males and 15 females available in the database for emotion analysis using physiological signals were studied, while subjects were watching sad, depressing, and fun music videos. Seven EEG frequency bands were computed using average Fourier cross-spectral matrices. Then, standardized low-resolution electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) was used to localize regions involved specifically in these emotional responses. To evaluate gender differences, independent sample t test was calculated for the sLORETA source powers. Our results showed that (1) the mean EEG power for all frequency bands in the women's group was significantly higher than that of the men's group; (2) spatial distribution differentiation between men and women was detected in all EEG frequency bands. (3) This difference has been related to the emotional stimuli, which was more evident for negative emotions. Taken together, our results showed that men and women recruited dissimilar brain networks for processing sad, depressing, and fun audio-visual stimuli.

The Effect of Memory in Inducing Pleasant Emotions with Musical and Pictorial Stimuli

Music is known to evoke emotions through a range of mechanisms, but empirical investigation into the mechanisms underlying different emotions is sparse. This study investigated how affective experiences to music and pictures vary when induced by personal memories or mere stimulus features. Prior to the experiment, participants were asked to select eight types of stimuli according to distinct criteria concerning the emotion induction mechanism and valence. In the experiment, participants (N = 30) evaluated their affective experiences with the self-chosen material. EEG was recorded throughout the session. The results showed certain interaction effects of mechanism (memory vs. stimulus features), emotional valence of the stimulus (pleasant vs. unpleasant), and stimulus modality (music vs. pictures). While effects were mainly similar in music and pictures, the findings suggest that when personal memories are involved, stronger positive emotions were experienced in the context of music, even when the music was experienced as unpleasant. Memory generally enhanced social emotions specifically in pleasant conditions. As for sadness and melancholia, stimulus features did not evoke negative experiences; however, these emotions increased strongly with the involvement of memory, particularly in the condition of unpleasant music. Analysis of EEG-data corroborated the findings by relating frontomedial theta activity to memory-evoking material.

The impact of musical experience on neural sound encoding performance

In this study, 64-channel single trial auditory brain oscillations (STABO) have been firstly analyzed by using complexity metrics to observe the effect of musical experience on brain functions. Experimental data was recorded from eyes-opened volunteers during listening the musical chords by piano. Complexity estimation methods were compared to each other for classification of groups (professional musicians and non-musicians) by using both classifiers (support vector machine (SVM), Naive Bayes (NB)) and statistical tests (one-way ANOVA) with respect to electrode locations. Permutation entropy (PermEn) is found to be the best metric (p ≪ 0.0001, 98.37% and 98.41% accuracies for tonal and atonal ensembles) at fronto-temporal regions which are responsible for cognitive task evaluation and perception of sound. PermEn also provides the meaningful results at the whole cortex (p ≪ 0.0001, 99.81% accuracy for both tonal and atonal ensembles) through SVM with Radial Basis kernels superior to Gaussians. Almost the similar performance is also obtained for temporal features. Although, performance improvements are observed for spectral methods with NB, the considerable better results are obtained with SVM. The results indicate that musical stimuli cause pattern variations instead of spectral variations on STABO due to relatively higher neuronal activities around auditory cortex. In conclusion, temporal regions produce response to auditory stimuli, while frontal area integrates the auditory task at the same time. As well, the parietal cortex produces neural information according to the degree of attention generated by environmental changes such as atonal stimuli. It can be clearly stated that musical experience enhances the neural encoding performance of sound tonality at mostly fronto-temporal regions.

Psychological and Musical Factors Underlying Engagement with Unfamiliar Music

What are the factors that determine how long a person chooses to listen to an unfamiliar piece of music? We examined this question across three experiments in which we played participants novel repeating multi-instrument stimuli and recorded their listening times and reasons for their decisions to either continue or stop listening. To influence the habituating effects of repeating musical material drawn from a large stimulus library (&amp;gt; 450 items), we manipulated novelty along several musical dimensions. In Experiment 1, all instruments entered simultaneously. In Experiment 2, instrument entrances were also offset in time. In Experiment 3, we composed core multi-instrument loops and manipulated them to further minimize harmonic variability, minimize rhythmic variability, introduce spatialization, or change timbral characteristics. Novelty introduced by instrument entrances was the strongest determinant of listening times, though harmonic variability and timbral features were also important. Subjective enjoyment was the best predictor of listening times, mediating the effects of the degree of perceived groove in a stimulus, the urge to move, interest in a stimulus, perceived complexity, and congruency with current mood. We conclude that naturalistic looping musical stimuli serve well to examine the diverse psychological and musical determinants of choice behavior underlying music consumption.

A linear oscillator model predicts dynamic temporal attention and pupillary entrainment to rhythmic patterns.

Rhythm is a ubiquitous feature of music that induces specific neural modes of processing. In this paper, we assess the potential of a stimulus-driven linear oscillator model (57) to predict dynamic attention to complex musical rhythms on an instant-by-instant basis. We use perceptual thresholds and pupillometry as attentional indices against which to test our model predictions. During a deviance detection task, participants listened to continuously looping, multiinstrument, rhythmic patterns, while being eye-tracked. Their task was to respond anytime they heard an increase in intensity (dB SPL). An adaptive thresholding algorithm adjusted deviant intensity at multiple probed temporal locations throughout each rhythmic stimulus. The oscillator model predicted participants’ perceptual thresholds for detecting deviants at probed locations, with a low temporal salience prediction corresponding to a high perceptual threshold and vice versa. A pupil dilation response was observed for all deviants. Notably, the pupil dilated even when participants did not report hearing a deviant. Maximum pupil size and resonator model output were significant predictors of whether a deviant was detected or missed on any given trial. Besides the evoked pupillary response to deviants, we also assessed the continuous pupillary signal to the rhythmic patterns. The pupil exhibited entrainment at prominent periodicities present in the stimuli and followed each of the different rhythmic patterns in a unique way. Overall, these results replicate previous studies using the linear oscillator model to predict dynamic attention to complex auditory scenes and extend the utility of the model to the prediction of neurophysiological signals, in this case the pupillary time course; however, we note that the amplitude envelope of the acoustic patterns may serve as a similarly useful predictor. To our knowledge, this is the first paper to show entrainment of pupil dynamics by demonstrating a phase relationship between musical stimuli and the pupillary signal.

Suppressing the Chills: Effects of Musical Manipulation on the Chills Response.

Research on musical chills has linked the response to multiple musical features; however, there exists no study that has attempted to manipulate musical stimuli to enable causal inferences, meaning current understanding is based mainly on correlational evidence. In the current study, participants who regularly experience chills (N = 24) listened to an original and manipulated version of three pieces reported to elicit chills in a previous survey. Predefined chills sections were removed to create manipulated conditions. The effects of these manipulations on the chills response were assessed through continuous self-reports, and skin conductance measurements. Results show that chills were significantly less frequent following stimulus manipulation across all three pieces. Continuous measurements of chills intensity were significantly higher in the chills sections compared with control sections in the pieces; similar patterns were found for phasic skin conductance, although some differences emerged. Continuous measurements also correlated with psychoacoustic features such as loudness, brightness and roughness in two of the three pieces. Findings are discussed in terms of understanding structural and acoustic features and chills experiences within their local music contexts, the necessity of experimental approaches to musical chills, and the possibility of different features activating different underlying mechanisms.

Music-evoked emotion recognition based on cognitive principles inspired EEG temporal and spectral features

Electroencephalographic (EEG) based emotion recognition has attracted increasing attention in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI). But, how to use the cognitive principles to enhance the emotion recognition model is still a challenge. The purpose of this research paper is to investigate the emotion cognitive process and its application. Firstly, to evoke the response emotions, a three-stage experimental paradigm of long-time music stimuli was designed. The EEG signals were recorded in 15 healthy adults during the listening of 16 music clips respectively. Then, the time course analysis method of music-evoked emotions was proposed to examine the differences of brain activities. There was great increase of the spectral power in alpha band and a slight decrease in high-frequency beta and gamma bands during music listening. Through time analysis, the characteristics of the inspiring–keeping–fading were also found in different emotional states. After that, the most relevant EEG features were selected based on the time correlation analysis between EEG and music features. Finally, based on the cognitive principles inspired EEG features, an emotional prediction system was built. From the results, the accuracies of binary classification were 66.8% for valence and 59.5% for arousal. The accuracies of 3-classes classification performed as 45.9% for valence and 45.1% for arousal. These results suggest that with the help of cognitive principles, a better emotional recognition system could be built. Understanding the cognitive process could promote the development of artificial intelligence.

Short-term enhancement of cognitive functions and music: A three-channel model

Short-term effects of music stimulus on enhancement of cognitive functions in human brain are documented, however the underlying neural mechanisms in these cognitive effects are not well investigated. In this study, we have attempted to decipher the mechanisms involved in alterations of neural networks that lead to enhanced cognitive effects post-exposure to music. We have investigated the changes in Electroencephalography (EEG) power and functional connectivity of alpha band in resting state of the brain after exposure to Indian classical music. We have quantified the changes in functional connectivity by phase coherence, phase delay, and phase slope index analyses. Spatial mapping of functional connectivity dynamics thus obtained, on brain networks revealed reduced information flow in long-distance connections between frontal and parietal cortex, and between other cortical regions underpinning intelligence. Analyses also showed increased power in the prefrontal and occipital cortex. With these findings, we have developed a stimulus-mechanism-end effect based neuro-cognitive model that explains the music induced cognitive enhancement by a three-channel framework - (1) enhanced global efficiency of brain, (2) enhanced local neural efficiency at the prefrontal lobe, and (3) increased sustained attention. Results signify that music directly affects the cognitive system and leads to improved brain efficiency through well-defined mechanisms.

Neural Correlates of Familiarity in Music Listening: A Systematic Review and a Neuroimaging Meta-Analysis.

Familiarity in music has been reported as an important factor modulating emotional and hedonic responses in the brain. Familiarity and repetition may increase the liking of a piece of music, thus inducing positive emotions. Neuroimaging studies have focused on identifying the brain regions involved in the processing of familiar and unfamiliar musical stimuli. However, the use of different modalities and experimental designs has led to discrepant results and it is not clear which areas of the brain are most reliably engaged when listening to familiar and unfamiliar musical excerpts. In the present study, we conducted a systematic review from three databases (Medline, PsychoINFO, and Embase) using the keywords (recognition OR familiar OR familiarity OR exposure effect OR repetition) AND (music OR song) AND (brain OR brains OR neuroimaging OR functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging OR Position Emission Tomography OR Electroencephalography OR Event Related Potential OR Magnetoencephalography). Of the 704 titles identified, 23 neuroimaging studies met our inclusion criteria for the systematic review. After removing studies providing insufficient information or contrasts, 11 studies (involving 212 participants) qualified for the meta-analysis using the activation likelihood estimation (ALE) approach. Our results did not find significant peak activations consistently across included studies. Using a less conservative approach (p < 0.001, uncorrected for multiple comparisons) we found that the left superior frontal gyrus, the ventral lateral (VL) nucleus of the left thalamus, and the left medial surface of the superior frontal gyrus had the highest likelihood of being activated by familiar music. On the other hand, the left insula, and the right anterior cingulate cortex had the highest likelihood of being activated by unfamiliar music. We had expected limbic structures as top clusters when listening to familiar music. But, instead, music familiarity had a motor pattern of activation. This could reflect an audio-motor synchronization to the rhythm which is more engaging for familiar tunes, and/or a sing-along response in one's mind, anticipating melodic, harmonic progressions, rhythms, timbres, and lyric events in the familiar songs. These data provide evidence for the need for larger neuroimaging studies to understand the neural correlates of music familiarity.