Stefan Koelsch

..Our results indicate that both music and language can prime the meaning of a word, and that music can, as language, determine physiological indices of semantic processing...

..Thus, our data suggest that the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying syntax processing in music and language are developed earlier, and more strongly, in children with musical training...

....

....

....

....

..This issue has so far been mainly neglected in the functional imaging (and psychophysiological) literature...

....

..These findings indicate that melodic information (which is also contained in the top voice of chords) is processed earlier and with partly different neural mechanisms than harmonic information of chords...

..Then, neuroscientific studies using music to investigate emotion, perception-action mediation ("mirror function"), and social cognition are reviewed, including illustrations of the relevance of these domains for music therapy...

..Because the P3a receives main contributions from the frontal, and the MMN from the temporal lobe, results support the notion that increased impulsivity is related to frontal, rather than temporal lobe function...

..The finding of a cardiac signature of emotional personality opens new perspectives for the investigation of relations between emotional dysbalance and cardiovascular disease...

..These networks appear to partly consist of sensorimotor-related circuits which provide resources for the representation and maintenance of information, and which are remarkably similar for the production of speech and song...

....

..There is lack of neuroscientific studies investigating music processing with naturalistic stimuli, and brain responses to real music are, thus, largely unknown...

..Findings thus indicate a strong overlap of neural resources involved in the processing of syntax in language and music...

..These effects may predispose the individual to increased risk for later cardio-vascular disease. The findings open perspectives for better risk prevention models for the unborn child...

....

..This finding might support the notion of a common origin of music and language in the human brain, and concurs with findings that demonstrate the importance of musical features of speech for the acquisition of language...

..Therefore, these findings provide no clear support for an interaction of neural resources for syntactic processing already at these early stages...

....

..These data provide evidence for a strong interrelation between the language and the music processing system, thereby setting the ground for possible effects of musical training in SLI therapy...

..Both groups also showed a P3 component in response to the very unexpected harmonies, which was considerably larger for musicians and may reflect the processing of stylistic violations of Western classical music...

..Hence, the present findings are consistent with the notion that Broca's area supports the processing of syntax in a rather domain-general way...

....

....

....

....

..This shows that during performance, the intention to produce specific auditory effects leads to stronger expectancies than the expectancies built up during music perception...

..Participants were "nonmusicians"; results thus support the hypothesis that nonmusicians have a sophisticated (implicit) knowledge about musical regularities...

..This study is about whether harmonic expectancy violations can trigger emotional processes, as indexed by physiological and subjective measures...

..The relationship between the ERP components is, moreover, manifested in the finding that an ERAN is present in linguistically nonimpaired children at the age of 5 years but not in children with language impairment of the same age...

..The results show that even short musical sounds outside of a musical context are capable of conveying meaning information, but that sounds require more elaborate processing than other kinds of meaningful stimuli...

..At present, the combinations of neural and computational modelling methodologies are at early stages and require further research...

....

..There were no group differences, suggesting that musical expertise does not have an influence on the processing of emotional expression in music and its semantic connotations...

..This is the first piece of evidence showing that tension- resolution patterns represent a route to meaning in music...

..The present results are discussed in relation to previous studies investigating harmonic violations with ERPs...

..Because dysfunctions in these structures are related to emotional disorders, a better understanding of music-evoked emotions and their neural correlates can lead to a more systematic and effective use of music in therapy...

..This effect is taken to reflect emotional processing in close interaction with attentional functions. These findings show that Fm theta is modulated by emotion more strongly than previously believed...

..Compare the processing of music-syntactic irregularities and physical oddballs between cochlear implant (CI) users and matched controls...

....

..The ERAN reflects fast and automatic neural mechanisms that process complex musical (music-syntactic) irregularities, and the present results indicate that these mechanisms can be modulated by expertise...

..Altogether, these results show that low frequency oscillatory networks get activated during the syntactic processing of both music and language, and further, these networks may possibly be shared...

..Corroborating previous results, the present study reveals differences in the efficiency of working memory processes for tonal compared to verbal stimuli with processes being more capable for the verbal compared to the tonal condition...

..Other processes, such as predicting subsequent acoustic events and comparing new acoustic information with the predicted sound, presumably overlap strongly for MMN and ERAN...

..This provides an important piece of evidence in support of music meaning being represented in a very similar but also distinct fashion to language meaning: Both elicit an N400, but activate different portions of the right temporal lobe...

..This ability is probably of great importance for the acquisition of language in infants and children...

..Both ERAN and N5 differed in amplitude as a function of music-theoretical principles. Participants had no special musical expertise; results thus provide evidence for an automatic processing of musical information in onmusicians."..

....

..In the present study, we investigated brain potentials before the commission of errors in a natural and complex situation...

....

..The combined behavioural and electrophysiological data show that the notion of musical syntax not only applies to the auditory modality but transfers - in trained musicians - to a "grammar of musical action"...

....

..Conclusion/Significance: Our data show that listening to music during surgery under regional anesthesia has effects on cortisol levels (reflecting stress-reducing effects) and reduces sedative requirements to reach light sedation...

..g. variations in tempo and loudness were eliminated). This raises the question of whether these ERPs can also be elicited during listening to more naturalistic stimuli...

..In both adults and children, musical training was correlated with stronger activations in the frontal operculum and the anterior portion of the superior temporal gyrus...

..These results suggest that musical expertise may exert its effects merely at attentive levels of processing and not necessarily already at the preattentive levels...

..The present findings indicate that gender differences for the analysis of auditory information are not restricted to processes in the linguistic domain such as syntax, semantics, and phonology...

..The ERAN mainly originates from frontal generators. The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of increasing propofol sedation on different stages of auditory processing as reflected in P1, MMN, and ERAN...