Magnetoencephalography evidence for different brain subregions serving two musical cultures

Individuals who have been exposed to two different musical cultures (bimusicals) can be differentiated from those exposed to only one musical culture (monomusicals). Just as bilingual speakers handle the distinct language-syntactic rules of each of two languages, bimusical listeners handle two distinct musical-syntactic rules (e.g., tonal schemas) in each musical culture. This study sought to determine specific brain activities that contribute to differentiating two culture-specific tonal structures. We recorded magnetoencephalogram (MEG) responses of bimusical Japanese nonmusicians and amateur musicians as they monitored unfamiliar Western melodies and unfamiliar, but traditional, Japanese melodies, both of which contained tonal deviants (out-of-key tones). Previous studies with Western monomusicals have shown that tonal deviants elicit an early right anterior negativity (mERAN) originating in the inferior frontal cortex. In the present study, tonal deviants in both Western and Japanese melodies elicited mERANs with characteristics fitted by dipoles around the inferior frontal gyrus in the right hemisphere and the premotor cortex in the left hemisphere. Comparisons of the nature of mERAN activity to Western and Japanese melodies showed differences in the dipoles' locations but not in their peak latency or dipole strength. These results suggest that the differentiation between a tonal structure of one culture and that of another culture correlates with localization differences in brain subregions around the inferior frontal cortex and the premotor cortex.