Neural Specializations for Tonal Processing

The processing of pitch, a central aspect of music perception, is neurally dissociable from other perceptual functions. Studies using behavioral-lesion techniques as well as brain imaging methods demonstrate that tonal processing recruits mechanisms in areas of the right auditory cortex. Specifically, the right primary auditory area appears to be crucial for fine-grained representation of pitch information. Processing of pitch patterns, such as occurs in melodies, requires higher-order cortical areas, and interactions with the frontal cortex. The latter are likely related to tonal working memory functions that are necessary for the on-line maintenance and encoding of tonal patterns. One hypothesis that may explain why right-hemisphere auditory cortices seem to be so important to tonal processing is that left auditory regions are better suited for rapidly changing broad-band stimuli, such as speech, whereas the right auditory cortex may be specialized for slower narrow-band stimuli, such as tonal patterns. Evidence favoring this hypothesis was obtained in a functional imaging study in which spectral and temporal parameters were varied independently. The hypothesis also receives support from structural studies of the auditory cortex, which indicate that spectral and temporal processing may depend on interhemispheric differences in grey/white matter distribution and other anatomical features.