Music effects on event-related potentials of humans on the basis of cultural environment

Auditory oddball responses were recorded from Turkish subjects in a silent environment or superimposed on white noise, or music played with violoncell o or a similar music played with ney, a reed flute frequently listened by t he Turkish population. P3 amplitudes with ney music in the background were significantly larger than both the white noise and violoncello backgrounds, The topography of the P3 response changed significantly between the ney an d silent background conditions, indicating a relatively higher participatio n of frontal areas during hearing ney. Our results showed that hearing musi c of a familiar style increases the allocation of attentional resources dur ing memory updating processes which is supposed to determine the P3 amplitu de, and therefore showed the effects of cultural environment on the cogniti ve processes. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.