Functional anatomy of musical perception in musicians

The present study used functional magnetic resonance to examine the cerebra l activity pattern associated with musical perception in musicians and non- musicians. Musicians showed left dominant secondary auditory areas in the t emporal cortex and the left posterior dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during a passive music listening task, whereas non-musicians demonstrated right d ominant secondary auditory areas during the same task. A significant differ ence in the degree of activation between musicians and nonmusicians was not ed in the bilateral planum temporale and the left posterior dorsolateral pr efrontal cortex. The degree of activation of the left planum temporale corr elated well with the age at which the person had begun musical training. Fu rthermore, the degree of activation in the left posterior dorsolateral pref rontal cortex and the left planum temporale correlated significantly with a bsolute pitch ability. The results indicated distinct neural activity in th e auditory association areas and the prefrontal cortex of trained musicians . We suggest that such activity is associated with absolute pitch ability a nd the use-dependent functional reorganization produced by the early commen cement of long-term training.