Measuring subcortical and cortical neural activities for music perception: A multilevel electroencephalography study.

Music perception requires the activation and coordination of many neuronal centers and pathways of the peripheral and central auditory pathway, which are highly overlapped with those of speech communication. Previous experiments have shown influences of musical training on brainstem encoding in the auditory periphery and long-term plasticity in the cortex. By testing listeners with different musical experience we hope to better to understand differences in central auditory processing across individual listeners. Here we explore methods for measuring subcortical and cortical neural activity in response to musically relevant stimuli by electroencephalography (EEG). A passive mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm using familiar musical intervals was presented to subjects to measure late evoked potentials in response to deviations in absolute musical interval and musical consonance. Brainstem frequency following responses (FFRs) for carrier frequencies and phase locking values to the beat-related envelopes were simultaneously measured. Results from these experiments can provide a means to objectively quantify individual differences in central auditory processing related to musical ability through non-invasive, electrophysiological methods.
PMID: 23655378