Content area
Abstract
Both language and music depend on rules and memorized representations. Double dissociations between the neurocognition of rule-governed and memory-based knowledge have been found in language but not music. Moreover, previous evidence suggests a female advantage in the use of memorized knowledge, but not of rules. Here, both rule- and memory-based aspects of music were examined in two studies: a behavioral study investigating sex differences in long-term memory for music, and an event-related potential (ERP) study investigating brain responses to rule and memory violations in melodies.
In the first study of melody recognition, females were faster than males at recognizing familiar melodies, regardless of musical training. This result was not explained by response biases or by verbal knowledge of lyrics, and is the first demonstration of a sex difference in the recognition of melodies. The results are not easily explained by a female advantage limited to the verbal domain. Rather, the data appear to be consistent with a more general female advantage at long-term memory that may specifically depend on the declarative memory brain system.
The second study examined ERPs in response to note violations in melodies. Rule-only violations consisted of out-of-key deviant notes that violated tonal harmony rules in novel (unfamiliar) melodies. Memory-only violations consisted of in-key deviant notes in familiar well-known melodies; these notes followed musical rules but deviated from the actual melodies. Finally, out-of-key notes in familiar well-known melodies constituted violations of both rules and memory. The results revealed a double dissociation between rules and memory: both rule violation conditions, but not the memory-only violations, elicited an early right-lateralized anterior-central negativity (ERAN), consistent with previous studies of rule violations in music, and analogous to the early left-lateralized anterior negativities elicited by rule violations in language. In contrast, both memory violation conditions, but not the rule-only violation, elicited a posterior negativity that can be characterized as an N400, an ERP component that seems to depend, at least in part, on the processing of representations stored in long-term memory. The results suggest that the neurocognitive rule/memory dissociation extends from language to music, further strengthening the similarities between the two domains.
