Washington [US]August 2 (ANI): According to a number of new studies, the idea of a song triggers brain activity similar to moments of silence in music. The results show how the brain continues to respond to music even when no music is playing.
When we listen to music, the brain tries to predict what will come next. A surprise, like a loud note or an inharmonious chord, increases brain activity. However, isolating the brain’s predictive signal is difficult because it is also responsive to the actual sensory experience.
The study was published in the journal JNeurosci.
Di Liberto, Marion, and Shamma used EEG to measure musicians’ brain activity while listening to or imagining Bach piano tunes. The activity in introducing music had the opposite polarity of the activity in listening to music, that is, if one was positive, the other was negative.
The same type of activity occurred in silent moments of the songs when, statistically speaking, a note could have been, but it wasn’t. There is no sensory input during silence and imagined music, so this activity comes from the brain’s predictions.
The research team also decoded brain activity to determine what song someone was imagining. The researchers find that music is more than just a sensory experience for the brain. Instead, the brain makes predictions even when no music is playing. (ANI)
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