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540 nature neuroscience • volume 4 no 5 • may 2001
It seems plausible that music, like language, has a syntax: both
have a structure based on complex rules. However, how a musi-
cal syntax may be described has remained a matter of debate
1–4
.
To investigate the processing of musical syntax, EEG studies
5,6
have taken advantage of the listener’s ability to expect specific
musical events according to a preceding musical context, and to
detect violations of harmonic expectancies within a musical
sequence. This ability may be an indication that a musical syn-
tax exists, mainly because the specificity of harmonic expectancy
corresponds to the degree of harmonic relatedness as described by
music theory
1,7–9
. That is, subjects expect to hear in sequence
harmonically related but not harmonically unrelated chords.
Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) elicited by syntactic
incongruities in language and music were compared in a pre-
vious study
5
. In that study, harmonic incongruities were inter-
preted as grammatical incongruity in music. It was shown that
both musical and linguistic structural incongruities elicit pos-
itivities with a latency of about 600 ms (the so-called P600)
that are statistically indistinguishable. The P600 reflects more
general knowledge-based structural integration during the per-
ception of rule-governed sequences. Additionally, a negative
music-specific ERP component with a latency of around
350 ms and an anterior right-hemisphere lateralization was
observed. This right anterio temporal negativity (RATN) was
elicited by out-of-key chords, and taken to reflect the applica-
tion of music-syntactic rules.
In another EEG study
6
, harmonically unrelated and func-
tionally inappropriate chords occurred within sequences of in-
key chords. Sequences consisting of in-key chords were composed
to build up a musical context, which correlates in listeners with
the buildup of strong expectancies to hear harmonically appro-
priate chords in sequence
7,8
. The principles that form the basis
of these expectancies have been described as a ‘hierarchy of har-
monic stability’
8
, and correspond to the theory of harmony
7,8
.
Harmonically appropriate chords are tonally related chords or
chord functions that fit well at certain positions in a musical con-
text (for example, a tonic chord at the end of a sequence)
8
. Inap-
propriate chords elicited an early right-anterior negativity
(ERAN). Notably, such chords were consonant major chords; it
was only the musical context that made them sound unexpect-
ed. Within the musical context, they could only be differentiated
from the in-key chords by the application of (implicit) musical
knowledge about the principles of harmonic relatedness
described by music theory. These principles or rules of music
theory may be thought of as musical syntax
4–8
.
Here we used the same experimental protocol as the preced-
ing EEG study
6
. Participants (all ‘non-musicians’) were present-
ed with directly succeeding chord sequences, each consisting of
five chords (Fig. 1). Sequences consisting exclusively of in-key
chords (cadences) established a musical context toward the end
of each sequence (Fig. 1a). Due to the buildup of musical con-
text, harmonic expectancies that were most specific at the end
of each sequence were generated in listeners. Besides the in-key
chord sequences, however, some sequences contained harmoni-
cally unexpected chords: a ‘Neapolitan sixth chord’ occurred at
the third position in 25%, and at the fifth position in another
25% of all sequences (Fig. 1b and c). This chord is a variation of
the subdominant, and contains two out-of-key notes, although
the chord itself is major and consonant.
Compared to in-key chords, chords containing out-of-key
(‘non-diatonic’) notes are, in music-theoretical terms, more
distant from the tonal center, and therefore perceived as unex-
pected
6,8,9,11,12
. As noted before, the ability of listeners to
expect chords according to their harmonic relatedness to a pre-
ceding harmonic context has been proposed to reflect the exis-
tence of a musical syntax. Because the Neapolitan chords
violated the expectancy for tonally related chords to follow,
effects elicited by the Neapolitan chords were thus proposed
to reflect music-syntactic processing. Because of the musical
context buildup, the harmonic expectancies of listeners were
violated to a higher degree at the fifth position (where the
expectancies were most specific) compared to the third posi-
tion of a sequence. Therefore, the effects of Neapolitan chords
were proposed to be larger at the fifth compared to the third
position. In addition, from a music-theoretical perspective,
Neapolitan chords function harmonically as a subdominant
Musical syntax is processed in
Broca’s area: an MEG study
Burkhard Maess, Stefan Koelsch, Thomas C. Gunter and Angela D. Friederici
Max Planck Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, PO Box 500 355, D-04303, Leipzig, Germany
Correspondence should be addressed to B.M. (maess@cns.mpg.de)
The present experiment was designed to localize the neural substrates that process music-syntactic
incongruities, using magnetoencephalography (MEG). Electrically, such processing has been
proposed to be indicated by early right-anterior negativity (ERAN), which is elicited by harmonically
inappropriate chords occurring within a major-minor tonal context. In the present experiment, such
chords elicited an early effect, taken as the magnetic equivalent of the ERAN (termed mERAN). The
source of mERAN activity was localized in Broca’s area and its right-hemisphere homologue, areas
involved in syntactic analysis during auditory language comprehension. We find that these areas are
also responsible for an analysis of incoming harmonic sequences, indicating that these regions
process syntactic information that is less language-specific than previously believed.
© 2001 Nature Publishing Group http://neurosci.nature.com
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nature neuroscience • volume 4 no 5 • may 2001 541
articles
variation; a Neapolitan chord at the third position of the
sequence was, functionally, fairly suitable (because a subdom-
inant in that position was appropriate), whereas a Neapolitan
at the fifth position was functionally inappropriate (because
only a tonic chord would be appropriate in that position).
Thus, a Neapolitan chord as presented here may be taken as
‘music-syntactically’ incongruous on the basis of both music-
psychological (with respect to harmonic expectations) and music-
theoretical reasoning (with respect to harmonic chord functions
and rules). From both perspectives, the degree of music-syntac-
tic incongruity is higher for Neapolitans at the fifth compared to
the third position. In the present study, we show that the mag-
netic effect elicited by the Neapolitans was stronger at the fifth
compared to the third position, indicating that this effect reflects
music-syntactic processing. This effect was generated in both
hemispheres in the inferior pars opercularis, known in the left
hemisphere as Broca’s area.
R
ESULTS
In-key chords elicited a large mean global field power (MGFP, a
measure of the strength of an evoked field), present in all sub-
jects at around 200 ms (relative to
stimulus onset, Fig. 2a). (This mag-
netic effect will henceforth be
referred to as the P2m.) Brain responses elicited from Neapolitan
and in-key chords in the fifth position clearly differed (Fig. 2b).
Neapolitan chords elicited a particular early magnetic field effect,
which was, at any sensor, nearly uni-modal over time, and was
largest around 200 ms (like the P2m). This effect (henceforth
referred to as the mERAN) can best be seen in the difference
waves of Fig. 2b. Virtually no magnetic effects were observable
after around 350 ms, for Neapolitans or for in-key chords.
The field maps of both P2m and mERAN reveal a dipolar
pattern over each hemisphere (Fig. 3a and b). In all subjects,
the fields of the mERAN had virtually an inversed ‘polarity’
compared to the fields of the P2m. Moreover, the steepest field
gradients of the mERAN are anterior to those of the P2m, indi-
cating that the neural generators of the mERAN are anterior
to those of the P2m.
Effects elicited by Neapolitan chords at the third and fifth
position were very similar in distribution and time course; how-
ever, the third-position effects were distinctly smaller (about half
of the strength of fifth-position effects, Figs. 2c and 3c). The
MGFP of the mERAN (in-key chord signals subtracted from
Neapolitan chord signals, Fig. 4) elicited at the third position dif-
fered significantly from the MGFP of the mERAN elicited at the
fifth position (paired t-test; t = 5.69, p = 0.005). (MGFP was cal-
culated for third and fifth position for each subject separately in
the time window from 170–210 ms.)
Dipole solutions
Dipole solutions for the P2m and the mERAN elicited at the fifth
position were obtained from each subject. (The signal-to-noise
ratio (SNR) of the effects elicited by Neapolitan chords at the
third position was too low to calculate reliable dipole solutions;
see Methods.) Then, locations of dipoles were transformed into
a Talairach-sized standard brain, and averaged across subjects.
For the P2m, one dipole was located in each hemisphere within
the middle part of Heschl’s gyrus (in the superior temporal
Fig. 1. Examples of chord sequences. (a) Cadences consisting exclu-
sively of in-key chords. (b) Chord sequences containing a Neapolitan
sixth chord at the third position. (c) Chord sequences containing a
Neapolitan at the fifth position; Neapolitan chords are indicated by
arrows. (d) Example of directly succeeding chord sequences as pre-
sented in the experiment.
a
b
c
d
Fig. 2. Time courses of magnetic field
strength. Data were chosen from two
representative subjects at four sensors
located in the magnetic field maxima.
(a) P2m time course elicited by in-key
chords. (b) Signals evoked by chords at
the fifth position, plotted separately for
Neapolitan (dashed lines) and in-key
chords (dotted lines). The effect elicited
by Neapolitan chords (mERAN) is indi-
cated by the solid lines (difference wave,
Neapolitan chord signals subtracted
from in-key chord signals); this effect
was maximal around 200 ms. (c) Signals
evoked by chords at the third position
(line designations as in b).
a
b c
© 2001 Nature Publishing Group http://neurosci.nature.com
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articles
542 nature neuroscience • volume 4 no 5 • may 2001
Fig. 3. P2m and mERAN, magnetic field maps. The
maps of the mERAN were calculated by subtracting
the event-related magnetic fields (ERFs) elicited by
in-key chords from the ERFs of Neapolitan chords.
gyrus), which corresponds to Brodmann’s area (BA) 41 (Fig. 5).
The dipole solution for the mERAN indicated, in each hemi-
sphere, one dipole located in the inferior part of the pars oper-
cularis (in the inferior frontal gyrus, part of BA 44; Fig. 5). The
residual normalized variance of dipole solutions was, on aver-
age, 5% for the mERAN and 4% for the P2m.
The generators of the mERAN were located approximately
2.5 cm anteriorly, and 1.0 cm superiorly with respect to the
generators of the P2m (Table 1). The generators of both the
P2m and the mERAN appear to have a stronger dipole moment
in the right than in the left hemisphere; a right-hemispheric
predominance of the mERAN was present in four of six sub-
jects. However, statistical analysis did not reveal a hemispher-
ic difference of effects.
To test whether the dipole locations of mERAN and P2m
differed significantly, y- and z-coordinates of dipoles were ana-
lyzed separately using ANOVAs with condition (P2m ×
mERAN) and hemisphere (left × right dipoles) as factors. Both
ANOVAs for y- and z-coordinates yielded an effect of condi-
tion (y-coordinates, F
1,5
= 37.2, p < 0.005; z-coordinates,
F
1,5
= 21.5, p < 0.01), indicating that the mERAN is generat-
ed anteriorly and superiorly to the P2m.
Only very small P1 and N1 were elicited by all chords. This is
presumably a consequence of the continuous stimulus presenta-
tion, in which one chord directly followed the other; the onset
of each chord was not an abrupt change in loudness. Particular-
ly, the N1 is thought to correspond to transient detection, because
the N1 is evoked by sudden changes in the level of energy imping-
ing on the sensory receptors
13,14
.
D
ISCUSSION
In-key chords elicited a distinct magnetic field effect, which was
maximal around 200 ms (P2m). The P2m is suggested here as
the magnetic equivalent of the electrical P2, because of its time
course, its ‘polarity,’ and the location and orientation of its gen-
erators. (The generators would produce a positive electrical
potential over fronto-central scalp regions.) The average of the
transformed individual dipole solutions yielded two generators of
the P2m, one located in each hemisphere in
the middle of Heschl’s gyrus (that is, within
or near the primary auditory cortex, near the
generators of the P1m
15–17
and the N1m
18–20
).
The dipole of the P2m tended to have a
stronger dipole moment in the right compared
to the left hemisphere. This finding might
reflect a preference of the right hemisphere for
the processing of tones and chords
21–24
.
Neapolitan chords at the fifth position of
the chord sequences elicited magnetic fields
that differed distinctly from those elicited by
in-key chords at the same position (although
participants were instructed to ignore the
harmonies; see Methods). Neapolitan chords
elicited an early magnetic field effect that was
maximal around 200 ms, the mERAN. The mERAN is regard-
ed here as the magnetic equivalent of the (electrical) ERAN.
Four findings support this assumption. First, the mERAN was
sensitive to harmonically inappropriate chords. Second, the
time course of the mERAN was virtually identical to the time
course of the ERAN
6
. Third, in all subjects, the fields of the
mERAN had an inversed polarity compared to the fields of the
P2m (corresponding to the ERAN and the P2). Fourth, the
mERAN is, like the ERAN, considerably smaller (about 50%)
when elicited by Neapolitan chords at the third versus the fifth
position (see below).
In contrast to the P2m, the generators of the mERAN were
not located within the temporal lobe. The mERAN was generat-
ed approximately 2.5 cm anterior to and 1.0 cm superior to the
P2m in both hemispheres, namely, in each hemisphere within
the inferior part of BA 44 (inferior part of the pars opercularis).
In the left hemisphere, this is known as Broca’s area.
The mERAN, like the ERAN, is suggested to reflect the
brain’s response to a harmonic context violation. Chords pre-
ceding the Neapolitan chords at the fifth position strongly estab-
lished a tonal key. During such a sequence, listeners build up a
‘hierarchy of harmonic stability’
8
, which induces strong har-
monic expectations for harmonically appropriate chords to fol-
low. At the fifth position of the chord sequences, a tonic chord
was harmonically most appropriate. Instead of a tonic, a
Neapolitan chord occurred, which contained out-of-key notes
and therefore sounded unexpected in the established tonal envi-
ronment
6–9,12,25–27
. Moreover, the remaining in-key note of the
Neapolitan chords (in C major, f ) was also unexpected, because
it does not belong to the tonic chord. The ability to perceive
distances between chords (and
keys, respectively) and to
expect certain harmonies (and
harmonic functions) to a
higher or lower degree can
only rely on a representation
of the principles of harmonic
relatedness described by music
Fig. 4. Mean global field power signals of the mERAN (MGFP averaged over all MEG channels and all subjects).
The MGFP was significantly stronger (shaded area) at the fifth position versus the third position.
0 200
50
ms
fT
ERANm, 5th chord
ERANm, 3rd chord
a b c
© 2001 Nature Publishing Group http://neurosci.nature.com
© 2001 Nature Publishing Group http://neurosci.nature.com
nature neuroscience • volume 4 no 5 • may 2001 543
articles
theory. These principles, or rules, were reflected in the harmonic
expectancies of listeners and may be interpreted as musical syn-
tax (see Introduction).
The mERAN was distinctly larger when elicited at the fifth
compared to the third position. This finding supports the hypoth-
esis that the mERAN reflects music-syntactic processing, because
the degree of music-syntactic incongruity was higher at the fifth
compared to the third position. Because of the musical context
buildup, which was more specific at the end of the sequence, and
because of the inappropriate chord function of a Neapolitan at
the fifth position (subdominant-variation instead of tonic), the
musical syntax was violated to a higher degree at the fifth com-
pared to the third position.
mERAN and MMNm
The mERAN is generated more anteriorly than the mismatch
negativity (MMN) or its magnetic equivalent (MMNm).
Whereas the MMN receives its main contributions from gen-
erators located in temporal areas
28
, we found that the mERAN
was generated in the frontal lobe. Frontal contributions to the
MMN have been reported for the frequency-MMN and EEG,
but not for MEG
29
, Broca’s area or its homologue
30–32
. More-
over, Neapolitan chords were not physical oddballs (no physi-
cal regularity preceded the Neapolitan chords); thus no
frequency- or spectral-MMN could be elicited. Therefore,
results support the hypothesis that the mERAN is not an
MMN, at least not the ‘classical’ MMN
6,14,42
.
The Neapolitan chords at the third and fifth position were
physically identical. Therefore, it could only be the degree of
music-syntactic incongruity, referring only to music-theoretical
terms, that modulated the amplitude of the mERAN. That is, the
finding that the mERAN is larger when elicited at the fifth posi-
tion again strongly supports the hypothesis that the mERAN is
not an MMN. Rather, the results indicate that the mERAN is
specifically correlated with the processing of auditory informa-
tion within a complex rule-based context.
Inferior BA 44 and syntax processing in language
Broca’s area and its right homologue, particularly the inferior
part of BA 44, are involved in the processing of syntactic aspects
during language comprehension
33–40
, and are specialized for fast
and automatic syntactic parsing processes
10
. The early left ante-
rior negativity (ELAN) reflecting these processes
10,41
is also gen-
erated, at least partially, in Broca’s area and its right-hemisphere
homologue
38
. The dipole solution for the magnetic ELAN reveals
dipoles in the left and the right inferior frontal cortex (with very
similar locations as the mERAN) in addition to bilateral tempo-
ral dipoles
38
. As described in the Introduction, the ERAN high-
ly resembles the ELAN, though with a different hemispheric
weighting.
The present results indicate that Broca’s area and its right-
hemisphere homologue might also be involved in the processing
of musical syntax, suggesting that these brain areas process con-
siderably less domain-specific syntactic information than previ-
ously believed. Like syntactic information of language, which is
fast and automatically processed in Broca’s area and its right-
hemisphere homologue, music-syntactic information processed
in the same brain structures also seems to be processed auto-
matically
42
. The magnetic fields of the mERAN were, in four of
six subjects (but not in the grand average), stronger over the right
than over the left hemisphere. This finding is consistent with the
ELAN, which is prevalently (although not consistently) stronger
over the left hemisphere. It is thus suggested here, as a working
hypothesis, that the left pars opercularis is more involved in the
processing of language syntax, and the right pars opercularis more
in the processing of musical syntax. However, both hemispheres
seem to be considerably activated in both domains.
In the present study, harmonically inappropriate chords
activated Broca’s area and its right-hemisphere homologue.
This finding is important for several reasons. First, it demon-
strates that complex rule-based information is processed in
these areas with considerably less domain-specificity than pre-
viously believed
21,39,43
. This might suggest that these areas
process syntax, that is, complex rule-based information, in a
domain other than language. This finding might lead to new
investigations of syntax processing in the musical, or even other
auditory but non-linguistic domains. Second, it reveals from
a functional-neuroanatomical view a strong relationship
between the processing of language and music. This relation-
ship might at least partly account for influences of musical
training on verbal abilities
44,45
. Third, the present study intro-
duced a new method of investigating music perception using
Fig. 5. Grand average dipole solutions for P2m and mERAN. Grand aver-
age dipole solutions, yellow; P2m, top; mERAN, bottom. Each panel shows
left and right sagittal and axial (parallel to AC-PC line) view. Dipole solu-
tions for both the P2m and the mERAN refer to two-dipole configurations
(one dipole in each hemisphere). Blue discs, single subject solutions.
Table 1. Locations and strengths of P2m and mERAN
dipoles (grand average of back-transformed dipole
solutions).
Dipole coordinates (x, y, z) and dipole moments (Q)
P2m left P2m right mERAN left mERAN right
(mean ± s.e.m.) (mean ± s.e.m.) (mean ± s.e.m.) (mean ± s.e.m.)
x (mm) –45 ± 2 51 ± 2 –48 ± 5 50 ± 3
y (mm) –16 ± 4 –19 ± 2 9 ± 4 6 ± 4
z (mm) 4 ± 2 4 ± 1 16 ± 1 14 ± 2
Q (nAm) 14 ± 5 22 ± 10 31 ± 15 35 ± 12
Values are given with respect to the Talairach coordinate system.
© 2001 Nature Publishing Group http://neurosci.nature.com
© 2001 Nature Publishing Group http://neurosci.nature.com
articles
544 nature neuroscience • volume 4 no 5 • may 2001
MEG. Effects were elicited in ‘non-musicians’ (even though
Neapolitan chords were task-irrelevant), supporting the
hypothesis of an (implicit) musical ability of the human brain,
and enabling a broad generalization of the present findings.
M
ETHODS
Subjects. Six right-handed and normal-hearing subjects (20 to 27 years
old; mean, 22.5; 4 females) participated in the experiment. Subjects were
non-musicians, that is, they had never learned singing or an instrument,
and they did not have any special musical education besides normal
school education.
Stimuli. The pool of stimuli consisted of 128 different chord sequences;
each sequence consisted of five chords. The first chord was always the
tonic of the following chord sequence; chords at the second position
were tonic, mediant, submediant, subdominant, dominant of the dom-
inant, secondary dominant of mediant, secondary dominant of sub-
mediant or secondary dominant of supertonic. The third position chord
was subdominant, dominant, dominant six-four, Neapolitan sixth, or if
preceded by a secondary dominant-mediant, the submediant or super-
tonic. The fourth position chord was the dominant seventh, and the
fifth position chord was either the tonic or the Neapolitan sixth. Texture
of chords followed the classical theory of harmony
46
. From the pool of
128 sequences, 1350 chord sequences were randomly chosen such that
the secondary dominants, Neapolitan chords at the third position, and
Neapolitan chords at the fifth position of a sequence occurred with a
probability of 25% each. Presentation time for chords 1 to 4 was 600 ms,
and for chord 5, 1200 ms. In 10% of the sequences, an in-key chord
from position 2–5 was played by an instrument other than piano. Chord
sequences were presented in direct succession. The same stimuli were
used in experiment 1 of the preceding EEG study
6
.
Procedure. Three experimental sessions were conducted (each compris-
ing three blocks). Participants were only informed about the deviant
instruments, not about the Neapolitan chords or their nature. Partici-
pants were instructed to ignore the harmonies.
MEG recording. The continuous raw MEG was recorded using the 4D-
Neuroimaging Magnes WHS 2500 whole-head system (San Diego, Cal-
ifornia), which used 148 magnetometer channels, 11 magnetic reference
channels and four EOG channels. Signals were digitized with a band-
width of 0.1 Hz to 50 Hz and a sampling rate of 254.31 Hz. The contin-
uous MEG data were filtered off-line with a 2–10 Hz band-pass filter
(1001 points, FIR). All subjects’ averaged data were transformed onto a
sensor-position representative for all blocks of this subject using ASA
(ANT Software, Enschede, The Netherlands) and were accumulated per
subject across all blocks and sessions.
Data analysis. For each participant, a realistically shaped volume con-
ductor was constructed, scaled to the subject’s real head size. This was
achieved by adjusting the size of the Curry-Warped brain (an average
brain obtained from more than 100 subjects; Neuroscan Labs, Ster-
ling, Virginia, B. Maess and U. Oertel, Neuroimage, 10, A8, 1999) to
each individual head shape. This method results in independent scal-
ing factors for all three spatial dimensions. The adjustment procedure
thus enabled source localization with an accuracy close that achieved
with individual MR-based models. These scaling factors were also use-
ful for the transformation of localization results into the Talairach-
sized brain.
To achieve a higher signal-to-noise ratio, the ERFs evoked by all in-
key chords were combined (The magnetic field maps of the P1, N1 and
P2m virtually did not differ between in-key chords presented at differ-
ent positions within the chord-sequences.) Dipole orientations were sep-
arated into tangential and radial contributions for each subject. The radial
contributions were then eliminated. The criterion for an acceptable dipole
solution was the explanation of at least 90% of normalized variance for
each subject. The data of only two subjects fulfilled the criterion for the
mERAN elicited at the third position, so no grand-average of dipole
solutions was done in this case.
A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported by the Leibniz Science Prize awarded to A.D. Friederici
by the German Research Foundation.
Note: Examples of the stimuli are available on the Nature Neuroscience web site
(http://www.neurosci.nature.com/web_specials).
RECEIVED 23 JANUARY; ACCEPTED 26 MARCH 2001
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