Abstract
Transposing of musical notes is a cognitively challenging task requiring working memory and the ability to convert notes mentally from one musical key to another. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to compare the timing and localization of brain regions active during transposing of printed music versus sight-reading of music in 21 professional musicians. Musical transposing of visual stimuli has not been examined in previous brain imaging studies. The MEG data were analyzed using three techniques: MR-FOCUSS (a current density imaging technique), coherence source imaging, and neural synchrony analysis. MEG was effective in detecting differences in brain activation underlying the increased cognitive load of a visual task and stimulus length. The additional mental conversion required for transposing compared to the sight-reading task was linked to increased frontal lobe activation and slowed activation of the ventral (fusiform gyrus) occipito-temporal stream of visual-spatial encoding.
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