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Updated: Aug 21, 2026

fMRI Mapping of Brain Activity Associated with the Vocal Production of Consonant and Dissonant Intervals
Published on: May 23, 2017
Does familiarity facilitate the cortical processing of music sounds?
1Neurophysics Group, Department of Neurology and Clinical Neurophysiology, Campus Benjamin Franklin, Charité-University Medicine Berlin, Hindenburgdamm 30, 12200 Berlin, Germany. neuloh@ukb.uni-bonn.de
Abstract:
Automatic cortical sound discrimination, as indexed by the mismatch negativity (MMN) component of the auditory evoked potential, is facilitated for familiar speech sounds (phonemes). In musicians as compared to non-musicians, an enhanced MMN has been observed for complex non-speech sounds. Here, musically trained subjects were presented with sequences of either familiar (tonal) or structurally matched unfamiliar (atonal) triad chords, both with either fixed or randomly transposed chord root pitch. The MMN elicited by deviant chords did not differ for familiar and unfamiliar triad sequences, and was undiminished even to unfamiliar deviant sounds which were consciously undetectable. Only subsequent attention-related components indicated facilitated cognitive processing of familiar sounds, corresponding to higher behavioral detection scores.
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