The Neural Mechanism Of Music Syntax And Tonality

Sequence of pitches or chords organized by hierarchical structure in harmonica music constitutes music syntax,violation of the music hierarchical structure would cause the difficult in syntax processing.Previous priming studies have revealed bilateral inferior frontal cortex's function in expectation of western tonal music temporal regularities,especially the left Broca's area.In present fMRI study,we aimed to reveal the neural mechanism of processing music syntax and tonality variance(classic,impressionism,atonal)in musicians and non-musicians.Our results showed bilateral STG and IFG areas with right IFG weighting decoded harmonic music syntax,in particular,dominant role of right IFG enable musicians triumphed over non-musicians.Atonal music syntax did not raise any significant activation in both groups.And the stronger informational connectivity between right inferior frontal gyrus(pars orbitalis)and left Pallidum and right superior temporal lobe with right Heschl's,as well as the weaker informational connectivity between bilateral superior temporal lobe and cerebellum(Vermis7)in music syntax processing can predict better music syntax behavior performance.To conclude,there exists a general mechanism endows human beings decipher harmonic music syntax and training could facilitate the sensitivity to the tonality,and the general mechanism functioned by the informational connectivity between cortical-subcortical network.Besides,atonal music sounds like scrambled music,namely non-harmonic music.