Barbara Tillmann CNRS-UMR 5020, Lyon, France
Music is a complex acoustic, non-verbal structure evolving over time. How is the brain processing musical structures so that music is more than just a juxtaposition of sounds and that listeners understand the context dependency of tones as well as their musical relations (i.e., arising from constraints described by music theory)? Numerous research in music cognition has provided evidence that non-musician listeners have acquired knowledge about the Western tonal system just by mere exposure to musical pieces obeying this system. This implicit tonal knowledge guides music perception and memory. Investigating music perception and cognition provides insights not only in the acquisition of complex nonverbal knowledge, its representation and its influence on perception, but also furthers our understanding of cognitive processes and neural correlates involved in language perception.
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