RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Positron-Emission Tomography of Brain Regions Activated by Recognition of Familiar Music
JF American Journal of Neuroradiology
JO Am. J. Neuroradiol.
FD American Society of Neuroradiology
SP 1101
OP 1106
VO 27
IS 5
A1 M. Satoh
A1 K. Takeda
A1 K. Nagata
A1 E. Shimosegawa
A1 S. Kuzuhara
YR 2006
UL http://www.ajnr.org/content/27/5/1101.abstract
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.