Processing syntactic relations in language and music: An event-related potential study

In order to test the language-specificity of a known neural correlate of sy ntactic processing [the P600 event-related brain potential (ERP) component] , this study directly compared ERPs elicited by syntactic incongruities in language and music. Using principles of phrase structure for language and p rinciples of harmony and key-relatedness for music, sequences were construc ted in which an element was either congruous, moderately incongruous, or hi ghly incongruous with the preceding structural context. A within-subjects d esign using 15 musically educated adults revealed that linguistic and music al structural incongruities elicited positivities that were statistically i ndistinguishable in a specified latency range. In contrast, a music-specifi c ERP component was observed that showed antero-temporal right-hemisphere l ateralization. The results argue against the language-specificity of the P6 00 and suggest that language and music can be studied in parallel to addres s questions of neural specificity in cognitive processing.