News Finding: Brain rhythms, they add, therefore appear to play a role in parsing and grouping sound streams into "chunks" that are then analyzed as speech or music.
Paper Finding: Plausibly, then, music-with its inherent rhythmicity-also drives this system.
News Context: This difference, the researchers say, may suggest that non-musicians are unable to process the music as a continuous melody rather than as individual notes. Moreover, musicians much more accurately detected pitch distortions--as evidenced by corresponding cortical oscillations. Brain rhythms, they add, therefore appear to play a role in parsing and grouping sound streams into "chunks" that are then analyzed as speech or music.
Paper Context: This suggests that the primary function reflected in this neural pattern is not specific to the task. Plausibly, then, music-with its inherent rhythmicity-also drives this system. What we consider intriguing is that this sensorimotor network, with a primary function in rhythmic processing, affects performance on a nonrhythmic task.