Elsevier

NeuroImage

Volume 16, Issue 4, August 2002, Pages 901-908
NeuroImage

Regular Article
Cortical Systems Associated with Covert Music Rehearsal

https://doi.org/10.1006/nimg.2002.1144Get rights and content

Abstract

Musicalrepresentation and overt music production are necessarily complex cognitive phenomena. While overt musical performance may be observed and studied, the act of performance itself necessarily skews results toward the importance of primary sensorimotor and auditory cortices. However, imagined musical performance (IMP) represents a complex behavioral task involving components suited to exploring the physiological underpinnings of musical cognition in music performance without the sensorimotor and auditory confounds of overt performance. We mapped the blood oxygenation level-dependent fMRI activation response associated with IMP in experienced musicians independent of the piece imagined. IMP consistently activated supplementary motor and premotor areas, right superior parietal lobule, right inferior frontal gyrus, bilateral mid-frontal gyri, and bilateral lateral cerebellum in contrast with rest, in a manner distinct from fingertapping versus rest and passive listening to the same piece versus rest. These data implicate an associative network independent of primary sensorimotor and auditory activity, likely representing the cortical elements most intimately linked to music production.

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      In the IDI-2 condition, however, we observed activations in both the right and left precentral gyrus (58 and 54 voxels, respectively). Supplementary motor area (SMA) has been shown to be active in music performance, music listening and music imagery (Langheim et al., 2002; Lotze et al., 2003; Tanaka and Kirino, 2017; Zatorre and Halpern, 2005; Zhang et al., 2017). Similarly, we observed activations of the left SMA in both internally driven conditions (IDI-1 and IDI-2)

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      The SMA activation found in the present study is also in keeping with the results obtained by Petsche, von Stein, and Filz (1996), who found that musicians exhibited significantly greater EEG power and tighter coherence patterns compared to non-musicians. Similarly, several PET studies have reported increased SMA activation during covert mental rehearsal of a musical score (Brodsky, Henik, Rubinstein, & Zorman, 2003; Halpern & Zatorre, 1999; Langheim, Callicott, Mattay, Duyn, & Weinberger, 2002). All of the above results, along with the findings of the present study, support the notion that MNs in the SMA differentially activate in musicians and do so when imagining as well as actually performing a given musical piece.

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