Different Brain Regions Handle Different Music Types
Functional MRI of the listening brain found that different regions become active when listening to different types of music and instrumental versus vocals. Allie Wilkinson reports
By Allie Wilkinson
SUBSCRIBE TO Science Quickly
On supporting science journalism
If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
Vivaldi versus the Beatles. Both great. But your brain may be processing the musical information differently for each. That’s according to research in the journal NeuroImage. [Vinoo Alluri et al, From Vivaldi to Beatles and back: Predicting lateralized brain responses to music]
For the study, volunteers had their brains scanned by functional MRI as they listened to two musical medleys containing songs from different genres. The scans identified brain regions that became active during listening.
One medley included four instrumental pieces and the other consisted of songs from the B side of Abbey Road.
Computer algorithms were used to identify specific aspects of the music, which the researchers were able to match with specific, activated brain areas. The researchers found that vocal and instrumental music get treated differently. While both hemispheres of the brain deal with musical features, the presence of lyrics shifts the processing of musical features to the left auditory cortex.
These results suggest that the brain’s hemispheres are specialized for different kinds of sound processing. A finding revealed but what you might call instrumental analysis.
—Allie Wilkinson
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
Subscribe to Support Independent Journalism
Great science journalism requires human expertise, time, effort and creativity. And it costs money. That’s why I and the journalists here at Scientific American hope you’ll join our community.
When you subscribe, you are supporting staff and freelance journalists who are passionate about telling science stories that are true, important and compelling. Our editors and reporters are often experts in their fields, which means they understand the nuances of big discoveries and can untangle the breakthroughs from the hype. With a subscription, you are also supporting rigorous fact-checking to ensure the words we publish are precise and accurate. And you’re supporting original illustrations, graphics and photos that bring you closer to an advanced laboratory, an ice sheet in Antarctica or a space mission in orbit. You’re helping us craft other types of high-quality journalism as well: Our newsletters are carefully written, edited and curated by staffers you have or will come to know and love. Our Science Quickly podcast is based on original reporting, collaboration with editors and scientists and exacting production.
Subscriptions keep this engine running so we can continue to deliver thoughtful, rigorous and independent science journalism to you. In an era of viral misinformation, this work is crucial. If you value what we do, I hope you’ll consider joining us as a subscriber
