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Dynamic aspects of musical imagery
Author(s) -
Halpern Andrea R.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
annals of the new york academy of sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.712
H-Index - 248
eISSN - 1749-6632
pISSN - 0077-8923
DOI - 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2011.06442.x
Subject(s) - auditory imagery , musical , cognitive psychology , psychology , mental image , neuroimaging , neural correlates of consciousness , cognitive science , computer science , cognition , neuroscience , visual arts , art
Auditory imagery can represent many aspects of music, such as the starting pitches of a tune or the instrument that typically plays it. In this paper, I concentrate on more dynamic, or time‐sensitive aspects of musical imagery, as demonstrated in two recently published studies. The first was a behavioral study that examined the ability to make emotional judgments about both heard and imagined music in real time. The second was a neuroimaging study on the neural correlates of anticipating an upcoming tune, after hearing a cue tune. That study found activation of several sequence‐learning brain areas, some of which varied with the vividness of the anticipated musical memory. Both studies speak to the ways in which musical imagery allows us to judge temporally changing aspects of the represented musical experience. These judgments can be quite precise, despite the complexity of generating the rich internal representations of imagery.