QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

HOME  |   SEARCH  |   ARCHIVE  |   SUBSCRIBE  |   CONTACT  |   HELP

The Journal of Neuroscience, August 24, 2005, 25(34):7718-7723; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1560-05.2005

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) An erratum has been published Submit an eLetter Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when eLetters are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in ISI Web of Science Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via ISI Web of Science (5) Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Bermudez, P. Articles by Zatorre, R. J. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Bermudez, P. Articles by Zatorre, R. J.

 Previous Article  |  Next Article 

Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Conditional Associative Memory for Musical Stimuli in Nonmusicians: Implications for Absolute Pitch

Patrick Bermudez and Robert J. Zatorre

Montréal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada H3A 2B4

A previous positron emission tomography (PET) study of musicians with and without absolute pitch put forth the hypothesis that the posterior dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is involved in the conditional associative aspect of the identification of a pitch. In the work presented here, we tested this hypothesis by training eight nonmusicians to associate each of four different complex musical sounds (triad chords) with an arbitrary number in a task designed to have limited analogy to absolute-pitch identification. Each subject under-went a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning procedure both before and after training. Active condition (identification of chords)- control condition (amplitude-matched noise bursts) comparisons for the pretraining scan showed no significant activation maxima. The same comparison for the posttraining scan revealed significant peaks of activation in posterior dorsolateral prefrontal, ventrolateral prefrontal, and parietal areas. A conjunction analysis was performed to show that the posterior dorsolateral prefrontal activity in this study is similar to that observed in the aforementioned PET study. We conclude that the posterior dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is selectively involved in the conditional association aspect of our task, as it is in the attribution of a verbal label to a note by absolute-pitch musicians.

Key words: frontal cortex; auditory; memory; conditional; music; absolute pitch

---

Received April 20, 2005; revised June 28, 2005; accepted July 6, 2005.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				S. J. Wilson, D. Lusher, C. Y. Wan, P. Dudgeon, and D. C. Reutens The Neurocognitive Components of Pitch Processing: Insights from Absolute Pitch Cereb Cortex, July 28, 2008; (2008) bhn121v1. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Home  |   Search  |   Archive  |   Subscribe  |   Contact  |   Help