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The Journal of Neuroscience, August 15, 2001, 21(16):6329-6337

Long-Range Synchrony in the  Band: Role in Music Perception

Joydeep Bhattacharya¹, Hellmuth Petsche², and Ernesto Pereda^{3, 4}

¹ Commission for Scientific Visualization Austrian Academy of Sciences, A-1010 Vienna, Austria, ² Brain Research Institute, University of Vienna, A-1090 Vienna, Austria, ³ Department of Systems Engineering, Institute of Technology and Renewable Energies, Poligono Industrial de Granadilla, 38611 Tenerife, Spain, and ⁴ Laboratory of Biophysics, University of la Laguna, 38320 Tenerife, Spain

Synchronization seems to be a central mechanism for neuronal information processing within and between multiple brain areas. Furthermore, synchronization in the  band has been shown to play an important role in higher cognitive functions, especially by binding the necessary spatial and temporal information in different cortical areas to build a coherent perception. Specific task-induced (evoked)  oscillations have often been taken as an indication of synchrony, but the presence of long-range synchrony cannot be inferred from spectral power in the  range. We studied the usefulness of a relatively new measure, called similarity index to detect asymmetric interdependency between two brain regions. Spontaneous EEG from two groupsmusicians and non-musicianswere recorded during several states: listening to music, listening to text, and at rest (eyes closed and eyes open). While listening to music, degrees of the  band synchrony over distributed cortical areas were found to be significantly higher in musicians than non-musicians. Yet no differences between these two groups were found at resting conditions and while listening to a neutral text. In contrast to the degree of long-range synchrony, spectral power in the  band was higher in non-musicians. The degree of spatial synchrony, a measure of signal complexity based on eigen-decomposition method, was also significantly increased in musicians while listening to music. As compared with non-musicians, the finding of increased long-range synchrony in musicians independent of spectral power is interpreted as a manifestation of a more advanced musical memory of musicians in binding together several features of the intrinsic complexity of music in a dynamical way.

Key words: EEG; synchronization; music; band; cognitive task; binding; similarity index

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Copyright © 2001 Society for Neuroscience  0270-6474/01/21166329-09$05.00/0

This article has been cited by other articles:

				J. Kaiser and W. Lutzenberger Induced Gamma-Band Activity and Human Brain Function Neuroscientist, December 1, 2003; 9(6): 475 - 484. [Abstract] [PDF]

				P. E. Andrade and J. Bhattacharya Brain tuned to music J R Soc Med, June 1, 2003; 96(6): 284 - 287. [Full Text] [PDF]

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