Toward the Neural Basis of Processing Structure in Music

In major-minor tonal music, chord functions are arranged according to certain regularities. The dominant-tonic progression, known as an authentic cadence, is often used as a marker of the end of a harmonic progression and has been considered a basic syntactic structure of major-minor tonal music by several music theorists and music psychologists. We review data from studies in which brain responses to an authentic cadence were compared to those elicited by music-syntactically inappropriate endings. In event-related electric brain potentials (recorded with EEG), the inappropriate endings elicit early right anterior negativity (ERAN), which is maximal around 200 ms after the presentation of an inappropriate chord. The ERAN is reminiscent of early anterior negativities elicited by syntactic incongruities during the perception of language. Magnetoencephalographic (MEG) data suggest that the ERAN is generated in the inferior frontolateral cortex, an area known to be crucially involved in the processing of (linguistic) syntax. Interestingly, the ERAN can be recorded in nonmusicians and in children, indicating that the ability to acquire (implicit) knowledge about musical regularities and to process musical information according to this knowledge is a general ability of the human brain. This ability is probably of great importance for the acquisition of language in infants and children.