Brain Indices of Music Processing: Nonmusicians are Musical

@article{Koelsch2000BrainIO,
  title={Brain Indices of Music Processing: Nonmusicians are Musical},
  author={Stefan Koelsch and Tomas Gunter and Angela D. Friederici and Erich Schrger},
  journal={Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience},
  year={2000},
  volume={12},
  pages={520-541}
}
Only little systematic research has examined event-related brain potentials (ERPs) elicited by the cognitive processing of music. The present study investigated how music processing is influenced by a preceding musical context, affected by the task relevance of unexpected chords, and influenced by the degree and the probability of violation. Four experiments were conducted in which nonmusicians listened to chord sequences, which infrequently contained a chord violating the sound expectancy of… 
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481 Citations

Processing Tonal Modulations: An ERP Study

TLDR
The hypothesis that nonmusicians have a sophisticated (implicit) knowledge about musical regularities is supported, as neural correlates of the cognitive processing of modulations with event-related brain potentials are investigated.

Electric brain responses to inappropriate harmonies during listening to expressive music

Untangling syntactic and sensory processing: an ERP study of music perception.

TLDR
The findings indicate that the ERAN is an index of music-syntactic processing and that theERAN can be elicited even when irregular chords are not detectable based on acoustical factors such as pitch repetition, sensory dissonance, or roughness.

Effects of Unexpected Chords and of Performer's Expression on Brain Responses and Electrodermal Activity

TLDR
The results show that the neural mechanisms of music-syntactic processing operate independently of the emotional qualities of a stimulus, justifying the use of stimuli without emotional expression to investigate the cognitive processing of musical structure.

Processing of Musical Syntax Tonic versus Subdominant: An Event-related Potential Study

TLDR
It is suggested that the subdominant chord is more difficult to integrate with the previous context than the tonic chord (as indexing by the observed N5) and that the processing of a small change in musical function occurs in an automatic way in musically expert listeners.

Representation of harmony rules in the human brain: Further evidence from event-related potentials

Harmony Wants to Sit in the Front: Different Brain Responses to Violations in Chord Progressions.

Deviations from auditory regularities elicit electric potentials distributed over the frontal regions of the scalp. The mismatch negativity (MMN) is elicited by change in repetitive auditory input,…

Musical Expectations Enhance Auditory Cortical Processing in Musicians: A Magnetoencephalography Study

Event-related brain potentials suggest a late interaction of pitch and time in music perception

Short-term effects of processing musical syntax: An ERP study

...

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