The Cortical Topography of Tonal Structures Underlying Western Music

@article{Janata2002TheCT,
  title={The Cortical Topography of Tonal Structures Underlying Western Music},
  author={Petr Janata and Jeffrey L. Birk and John Darrell Van Horn and Marc Leman and Barbara Tillmann and Jamshed J. Bharucha},
  journal={Science},
  year={2002},
  volume={298},
  pages={2167 - 2170}
}
Western tonal music relies on a formal geometric structure that determines distance relationships within a harmonic or tonal space. In functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments, we identified an area in the rostromedial prefrontal cortex that tracks activation in tonal space. Different voxels in this area exhibited selectivity for different keys. Within the same set of consistently activated voxels, the topography of tonality selectivity rearranged itself across scanning sessions. The… 
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