News Finding: The study, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, points to a newfound role the brain's cortical oscillations play in the detection of musical sequences.
Paper Finding: The surprising result then is that this process-the divining of temporal structure within music-facilitates pitch processing and distortion detection when such detection would seemingly have a minimal relationship to the music's temporal structure.
News Context: The study, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, points to a newfound role the brain's cortical oscillations play in the detection of musical sequences. The findings also suggest musical training can enhance the functional role of brain rhythms. "Specifically, our findings show that the presence of these rhythms enhances our perception of music and of pitch changes."
Paper Context: Therefore, the beta activity must be predicting the timing of the notes, not of the distortion. The surprising result then is that this process-the divining of temporal structure within music-facilitates pitch processing and distortion detection when such detection would seemingly have a minimal relationship to the music's temporal structure. Accurately predicting when the beginning of the next note will come actually helps listeners to detect deviations in pitch at any point in the stimulus.