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Swinging in the brain: shared neural substrates for behaviors related to sequencing and music

Nature Neuroscience volume 6, pages 682–687 (2003)Cite this article

Abstract

Music consists of precisely patterned sequences of both movement and sound that engage the mind in a multitude of experiences. We move in response to music and we move in order to make music. Because of the intimate coupling between perception and action, music provides a panoramic window through which we can examine the neural organization of complex behaviors that are at the core of human nature. Although the cognitive neuroscience of music is still in its infancy, a considerable behavioral and neuroimaging literature has amassed that pertains to neural mechanisms that underlie musical experience. Here we review neuroimaging studies of explicit sequence learning and temporal production—findings that ultimately lay the groundwork for understanding how more complex musical sequences are represented and produced by the brain. These studies are also brought into an existing framework concerning the interaction of attention and time-keeping mechanisms in perceiving complex patterns of information that are distributed in time, such as those that occur in music.

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Figure 1: Summary of the complexity of behavioral tasks examined in 34 neuroimaging studies of sequence learning and/or time-interval production.
Figure 2: Patterns of responsiveness of different brain areas across levels of temporal and ordinal complexity.
Figure 3: Projection of activation loci reported in 34 neuroimaging studies of sequencing (filled spheres) and 10 studies using musical stimuli and tasks (yellow outlines).
Figure 4: Cumulative proportions of the total number of reported activations for each brain region as a function of increasing complexity.

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Acknowledgements

We thank R. Ivry for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. Supported by US National Institutes of Health grants P50 NS17778-18, R03 DC05146 and NS33504-10.

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  1. Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Dartmouth College, Hanover, 03755, New Hampshire, USA

    Petr Janata & Scott T Grafton

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Correspondence to Petr Janata.

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Janata, P., Grafton, S. Swinging in the brain: shared neural substrates for behaviors related to sequencing and music. Nat Neurosci 6, 682–687 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1081

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