Musical imagery: The Sound of silence

Subject: Musical imagery: The Sound of silence
From: Wolfgang
Date: 10 Mar 05 - 06:00 AM

from Nature 434, 158 (10 March 2005):

During scanning, subjects passively listened to excerpts of songs with lyrics (for example, Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones) and to instrumentals that contained no lyrics (for example, the theme from The Pink Panther). Each piece of music was pre-rated by subjects as either familiar or unknown, and a unique soundtrack was created for each individual. Short sections of music (lasting for 2–5 s) were extracted at different points during the soundtrack and replaced with silent gaps. We then monitored the neural activity in subjects that occurred during these gaps. ...

Brain activity in the primary auditory cortex and in the auditory association cortex (Brodmann's area 22) was compared during gaps of silence in familiar and unknown songs. The results revealed a functional dissociation within the left auditory cortex. Silent gaps embedded in familiar songs induced greater activation in auditory association areas than did silent gaps embedded in unknown songs; this was true for gaps in songs with lyrics and without lyrics. Moreover, when familiar songs contained no lyrics, cortical activity extended into the left primary auditory cortex....

offer a neural basis for the spontaneous and sometimes vexing experience of hearing a familiar melody in one's head...

When semantic knowledge (that is, lyrics) could be used to generate the missing information, reconstruction terminated in auditory association areas. When this meaning-based route to reconstruction was unavailable (as in instrumentals), activity extended to lower-level regions of the auditory cortex, most notably the primary auditory cortex.

These findings parallel those in the domain of visual imagery.

my comment: Our reality monitory system usually separates reliably between mental imagery and input triggered neural activity. So we can tell for instance the difference between making love and daydreaming making love. However, under duress, medication, sleeplessness, hypoxia and some other states (some of the techniques gurus use can lead to these states), the reality monitoring system can break down and we may experience imagery as data driven reality which is in no way different form normal reality excapt that others would not hear what we hear and not see what we see.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Musical imagery: The Sound of silence
From: mack/misophist
Date: 10 Mar 05 - 11:22 AM

On the surface, it seems obvious. It needed to be demonstrated, though.

Subject: RE: Musical imagery: The Sound of silence
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 10 Mar 05 - 05:23 PM

I took me a long time to wade through the verbiage, but I guess they are saying that memory of a song is stored in a certain area of the brain. Or maybe two. That surprises me . I would have thought that musical data would be in one area and speech in another.

It would be interesting to see if words excite a different part of the brain than nonsense syllables do.