M. Besson et al., BRAIN WAVES ASSOCIATED WITH MUSICAL INCONGRUITIES DIFFER FOR MUSICIANS AND NON-MUSICIANS, Neuroscience letters, 168(1-2), 1994, pp. 101-105
Musicians and non-musicians were presented with short musical phrases
that were either selected from the classical musical repertoire or com
posed for the experiment. The phrases terminated either in a congruous
or a 'harmonically', 'melodically', or 'rhythmically' incongruous not
e. The brain waves produced by the end-notes differed greatly between
musicians and non-musicians, and as a function of the subject's famili
arity with the melodies and the type of incongruity. The timing of the
se brain waves revealed that musicians are faster than non-musicians i
n detecting incongruities. This study provides further neurophysiologi
cal evidence concerning the mechanisms underlying music perception and
the differences between musical and linguistic processing.