PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - M. Satoh
AU  - K. Takeda
AU  - K. Nagata
AU  - E. Shimosegawa
AU  - S. Kuzuhara
TI  - Positron-Emission Tomography of Brain Regions Activated by Recognition of Familiar Music
DP  - 2006 May 01
TA  - American Journal of Neuroradiology
PG  - 1101--1106
VI  - 27
IP  - 5
4099  - http://www.ajnr.org/content/27/5/1101.short
4100  - http://www.ajnr.org/content/27/5/1101.full
SO  - Am. J. Neuroradiol.2006 May 01; 27
AB  - BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: We can easily recognize familiar music by listening to only one or 2 of its opening bars, but the brain regions that participate in this cognitive processing remain undetermined. We used positron-emission tomography (PET) to study changes in regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) that occur during listening to familiar music.METHODS: We used a PET subtraction technique to elucidate the brain regions associated with the recognition of familiar melodies such as well-known nursery tunes. Nonmusicians performed 2 kinds of musical tasks: judging the familiarity of musical pieces (familiarity task) and detecting deliberately altered notes in the pieces (alteration-detecting task).RESULTS: During the familiarity task, bilateral anterior portions of bilateral temporal lobes, superior temporal regions, and parahippocampal gyri were activated. The alteration-detecting task bilaterally activated regions in the precunei, superior/inferior parietal lobules, and lateral surface of frontal lobes, which seemed to show a correlation with the analysis of music.CONCLUSION: We hypothesize that during the familiarity task, activated brain regions participate in retrieval from long-term memory and verbal and emotional processing of familiar melodies. Our results reinforced the hypothesis reported in the literature as a result of group and case studies, that temporal lobe regions participate in the recognition of familiar melodies.