Decrease in early right alpha band phase synchronization and late gamma band oscillations in processing syntax in music

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Herrojo Ruiz, Maria; Koelsch, Stefan and Bhattacharya, Joydeep. 2009. Decrease in early right alpha band phase synchronization and late gamma band oscillations in processing syntax in music. Human Brain Mapping, 30(4), pp. 1207-1225. ISSN 1065-9471 [Article]

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Official URL: http://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.20584

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The present study investigated the neural correlates associated with the processing of musicsyntactical irregularities as compared with regular syntactic structures in music. Previous studies reported an early (�200 ms) right anterior negative component (ERAN) by traditional event-related-potential analysis during music-syntactical irregularities, yet little is known about the underlying oscillatory and synchronization properties of brain responses which are supposed to play a crucial role in general cognition including music perception. First we showed that the ERAN was primarily represented by low frequency (<8 Hz) brain oscillations. Further, we found that music-syntactical irregularities as compared with music-syntactical regularities, were associated with (i) an early decrease in the alpha band (9–10 Hz) phase synchronization between right fronto-central and left temporal brain regions, and (ii) a late (�500 ms) decrease in gamma band (38–50 Hz) oscillations over fronto-central brain regions. These results indicate a weaker degree of long-range integration when the musical expectancy is violated. In summary, our results reveal neural mechanisms of music-syntactic processing that operate at different levels of cortical integration, ranging from early decrease in long-range alpha phase synchronization to late local gamma oscillations.

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Article

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https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.20584