Part I: Cerebral Organization of Music‐Related Functions

Over the last decade, we have seen an impressive flourishing of investigations into the cerebral representation of music-related functions. This increased attention is quickly bridging the gap between this field and previously more advanced research areas such as perceptual, language, and motor functions, and our better understanding of the way music is processed within the central nervous system has provided new insights into the neural machinery involved in higher brain functioning. One important factor contributing to our greater ability to explore the musical competence of the brain has been the improvements made in the morphological resolution and functional investigation capacities of imaging techniques. Positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies are complementing neurophysiological investigations that are still unsurpassed for their optimal time resolution and that have benefited from new signal analysis techniques in both electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG). The integration of these instrumental analyses with neuropsychological tests specifically designed to test musical competencies related to music perception and production has significantly improved our understanding of the brain representation of musical abilities. It is important to remember that “musical” abilities need to be tested by experimental protocols that necessarily address only specific aspects of music: the term “pitch” refers to a perceptual rather than a particular stimulus structure, and we perceive a given pitch whether it is associated with a pure tone or a harmonic stimulus such as a musical instrument or voice. One critical aspect of music appreciation is the analysis of perceptual patterns in which individual percepts are simultaneously combined to form chords and harmonic structures and sequentially to form melodies. Various paradigms based on the presentation to subjects of inappropriate changes (“violations”) in musical structure have proved to be particularly fruitful, and a number of protocols have been developed on the basis of violations of authentic cadences, melody contours, temporal organization of sounds, and spatial localization of their source. Specific event-related brain potentials (ERPs) detected by analyzing EEG and MEG signals are associated with different types of violations. These are called early right anterior negativity (ERAN), mismatch negativity (MMN), and P300 depending on the polarity, latency, and topography of the recorded event and the different stimulatory conditions. Their