Though music is an essential component of virtually all cultures, little is known about the neural basis for music perception and cognition. The proposed project is an extensive five-year series of increasingly complex controlled psychophysical experiments during which neurophysiological measurements will be taken. Normal adult subjects, grouped according to degree of musical training and the possession of absolute pitch will be used. Neurophysiological measures will focus on working memory in music perception and cognition; specifically, P3 and N4 evoked potentials will be tracked in a musical setting and will be compared with known functions in other cognitive modes, such as language. The objectives of the project are: 1) to uniquely correspond to musical perception and cognition; 2) to confirm differences in performance levels and task strategies between trained musicians and untrained adults; and 3) to correlate such differences with differences in neural activity. The project will contribute significantly to the advancement of knowledge of auditory neurophysiological processing through the extensive study of one important area of human activity which has largely been ignored, i.e. music perception, and will also help further define the functional significance of the neural probes used. It also has the potential for a wide range of applications. Clinical applications would include a greater understanding of the causes of performance-related neurological disorders, thus leading to more effective treatment. Further, music has been shown to be an effective therapy in the management of dementias, particularly of the Alzheimer's type. The proposed project will form a basis for the increased understanding of such diseases, for the more effective use of music therapy. From a purely music-theoretic standpoint, the project will contribute greatly to an understanding of the specific strategies used to perform musical tasks; and by isolating the effects of training, the project will yield important information for the improvement of music education in our elementary, secondary, and professional music schools.
| Hantz, E C; Kreilick, K G; Marvin, E W et al. (1997) Absolute pitch and sex effect event-related potential activity for a melodic interval discrimination task. J Acoust Soc Am 102:451-60 |
| Hantz, E C; Marvin, E W; Kreilick, K G et al. (1996) Sex differences in memory for timbre: an event-related potential study. Int J Neurosci 87:17-40 |
| Crummer, G C; Walton, J P; Wayman, J W et al. (1994) Neural processing of musical timbre by musicians, nonmusicians, and musicians possessing absolute pitch. J Acoust Soc Am 95:2720-7 |
| Swartz, K P; Walton, J P; Hantz, E C et al. (1994) P3 event-related potentials and performance of young and old subjects for music perception tasks. Int J Neurosci 78:223-39 |
