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Updated: Sep 4, 2025

fMRI Mapping of Brain Activity Associated with the Vocal Production of Consonant and Dissonant Intervals
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Enhanced mismatch negativity in harmonic compared with inharmonic sounds.

David Ricardo Quiroga-Martinez1,2, Krzysztof Basiński3, Jonathan Nasielski4

  • 1Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.

The European Journal of Neuroscience
|July 14, 2022
PubMed
Summary

Harmonic sounds, common in music, elicit stronger brain responses than inharmonic sounds. This effect, observed using electroencephalography (EEG), suggests harmonicity influences auditory processing beyond just pitch perception.

Keywords:
amusiaauditory perceptionevent-related potentialsharmonicitypitch perception

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Area of Science:

  • Auditory Neuroscience
  • Psychoacoustics
  • Cognitive Science

Background:

  • Harmonicity, a property of many natural sounds, involves frequency spectra with integer multiples of a fundamental frequency.
  • While harmonicity is crucial for pitch perception, its influence on other sound features and neural processing remains less understood.
  • Predictive processing theories suggest that lower information entropy in harmonic sounds might lead to more pronounced neural responses due to reduced sensory uncertainty.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how harmonicity affects neural processing of sound features beyond pitch.
  • To examine brain responses (MMN and P3a) to harmonic versus inharmonic musical sounds (piano, hi-hat).
  • To explore the role of harmonicity in auditory information processing, particularly in individuals with and without congenital amusia.

Main Methods:

  • Electroencephalography (EEG) was used to record brain activity.
  • A multifeature oddball paradigm presented harmonic and inharmonic piano tones and hi-hat cymbal sounds.
  • Mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3a responses were measured for deviants in timbre, intensity, and location in participants with and without congenital amusia.

Main Results:

  • Harmonic sounds elicited larger amplitudes and earlier latencies for both MMN and P3a compared to inharmonic sounds.
  • These effects of harmonicity varied depending on the specific sound feature (timbre, intensity, location).
  • The latency difference between harmonic and inharmonic sounds was more pronounced in control participants than in those with congenital amusia.

Conclusions:

  • Harmonicity significantly influences neural processing of auditory features beyond pitch, supporting predictive coding models.
  • The findings suggest that the brain's precision weighting of prediction errors is modulated by sound harmonicity and its associated information entropy.
  • Congenital amusia may affect how pitch processing impairments interact with harmonicity-driven auditory processing.