The Neural Basis Of The Influence Of Music Training On Phrase Structure Processing

As music unfolds in time,the meaning of the music works is conveyed by multi-dimensional and complex music synthesis.Musical elements is not simply a flat serial pattern,but rather a hierarchical and recursive organization which is organized on the basis of music structure rules.During the listening process,besides the perception of musical elements,the processing of musical structure plays an important role in musical understanding.Phrase boundary and musical syntax are two main aspects for the phrase-level structure perception.Musical training are reflected in functional and structural differences in the brain between musicians and nonmusicians.Although previous studies have found that musical training facilitates the perception of pitch and rhythm in music,the effects of musical training on the cognition of music structure is limited.The aim of the study was to investigate the neural basis of the processing of musical syntax and phrase boundary in musicians and nonmusicians.Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 used event-related potentials(ERPs)to investigate the electrophysiological correlate of the processing of rhythmic syntax and whether and to what extent long-term musical training affects such processing.The two experiments manipulated the consistency of rhythmic accent and metric accent in the middle position and in the end position respectively.Syntactically irregular rhythmic sequences were composed to have a inconsistency rhythmic accent and metric accent.The results found that,in the middle position,irregular rhythmic events elicited an ERAN effect and a P600 effect in both musicians and nonmusicians.In the end position,although irregular rhythmic events elicited a P600 effect in both musicians and nonmusicians,an ERAN effect was only exhibited in musician but not in nonmusicians.These results indicated that musical exposure is sufficient to enable nonmusicians to process rhythmic syntax,while musical training modulates the processing of rhythmic syntax at the early automatic stage.Experiment 3 simultaneously manipulated rhythmic syntax and harmonic syntax to examine the neural substrates of the processing of syntax in harmonic and rhythmic dimensions.The results showed that both musicians and nonmusicians exhibited an ERAN and a N5 effect in response to rhythmic syntax,but only a N5 effect to harmonic syntax.Furthermore,the processing of rhythmic and harmonic syntax were interactive reflected by the N5 effect.Experiment 4 and Experiment 5 used ERPs to investigate the neural correlates of the processing of phrase boundary elicited by harmonic structure in symmetric and asymmetric phrase structure.The findings revealed that in symmetric phrase structure,only musicians can perceive the harmonic phrase boundary by showing a CPS component.However,it is difficult to process the harmonic phrase boundary in asymmetric phrase structure for both musicians and nonmusicians and neither of them showed a CPS.Experiment 6 explored the simultaneous processing of phrase boundary elicited by harmonic structure and temporal structure.The results showed that a CPS component was elicited by phrase boundary of temporal structrure,but not by phrase boundary of harmonic structure in both musicians and nonmusicians.These findings indicate that although both musicians and nonmusicians can process musical syntax and phrase boundary to some extent,musicians show better automatic processing of rhythmic syntax and better processing of phrase boundary of harmonic structure than nonmusicians.This is the first study to explore the neural basis of the processing of rhythmic syntax and phrase boundary of harmonic and rhythmic structure.The findings contribute to reveal the neural processing of musical structure,answer the question of whether and to what extent the processing of musical structure is modulated by musical training and provide evidence for music education.