Only little research has examined event-related brain potentials (ERPs) elicited by the cognitive processing of music. Proceeding from music-psychological knowledge obtained by subjective measures the present study focusses on how the brain reflects electrophysiologically processes of musical expectancy violation, and of harmonic reintegration.
While brain electric responses were recorded, non-musicians listened under both attend and ignore conditions to cadences, i.e. chords-sequences, either consisting of in-key chords or containing chords with out-of-key notes. Chords with out-of-key notes were either neapolitan sixth chords or cluster. ERPs of these chords revealed two ERP-components: an early right anterior negativity ("ERAN") taken here to reflect the violation of sound expectancy, and a late bilateral frontal negativity ("LFN") interpreted here as reflecting harmonic reintegration processes. The amplitudes of "ERAN" and "LFN" were found to be dependent on musical expectancies induced by the preceding harmonic context. Moreover, both components increased with the amount of violation, i.e. they were larger for cluster than neapolitan chords. Since participants
were "non-musicians", the present study provides electrophysiological evidence for the hypothesis of the implicit musicality of the human brain.
Poster in der Gruppe Wahrnehmung und Aufmerksamkeit I, Montag, 29. März 1999, 17:00-19:00, Foyer 2. Stock
