The neural correlates of music perception have received relatively little scientific attention. The neural activity of listeners without musical training (N = 11), highly trained musicians (N = 14), and musicians possessing "absolute pitch" (AP) ability (N = 10) have been measured. Major differences were observed in the P3, an endogenous event-related potential (ERP), which is thought to be a neurophysiological manifestation of working memory processing. The P3 was elicited using the classical "oddball" paradigm with a sine-tone series. Subjects' musical backgrounds were evaluated with a survey questionnaire. AP ability was verified with an objective pitch identification test. The P3 amplitude, latency and wave shape were evaluated along with each subjects' performance score and musical background. The AP subjects showed a significantly smaller P3 amplitude than either the musicians or nonmusicians, which were nearly identical. The P3 latency was shortest for the AP subjects, and was longer for the nonmusicians. Performance scores were uniformly high in all three groups. It is concluded that AP subjects do indeed exhibit P3 ERPs, albeit with smaller amplitudes and shorter latencies. The differences in neural activity between the musicians and AP subjects were not due to musical training, as the AP subjects had similar musical backgrounds to the musician group. It is also concluded that persons with the AP ability may have superior auditory sensitivity at cortical levels and/or use unique neuropsychological strategies when processing tones.

During perceptual tasks involving the discrimination of musical intervals, event-related potentials, specifically the P3, were measured for three subject groups: musicians without absolute pitch, musicians with absolute pitch, and nonmusicians. The two interval-discrimination tasks were a simple two-note contour task and a difficult interval-size discrimination task. Clear effects on the neural waveforms were found for both training and the presence of the absolute pitch ability. In general, training increases the amplitude and shortens the latency of the P3, while the absolute pitch ability reduces the amplitude and shortens the latency, or eliminates the P3 altogether. The absolute pitch effect may be due to the use of a long-term memory strategy involved in the correct performance of the discrimination task rather than performing the task by updating working memory each time a target occurs. Finally, these data are contrasted with those from studies involving sine tones and timbrediscrimination tasks.

Electrophysiological measures of expectancy violation processing by the brain, such as the P300 component of the event-related potential, have provided insight into the way in which humans with varying amounts of musical experience maintain representations of musical information, in particular tonal representations. Bischoff Renninger and colleagues (2006) seek to extend this work by examining the P300 in the context of the very interesting topic of cross-cultural music perception, using Western listeners who either have or have not undergone training in Javanese music. Their study highlights the myriad issues and complexities of experimental design and analysis that must be addressed if one is to conduct an ethologically compelling and interpretable study of musical context representations using brain responses as dependent measures.

The event-related evoked potential (ERP) responses to sentence endings that either confirm or violate syntactic/semantic constraints have been extensively studied. Very little is known, however, about the corresponding situation with respect to music. The current study investigates the brain- wave (ERP) responses to perceived phrase closure. ERPs are a potentially valid measure of how language-like or uniquely musical the perception of phrase closure is. In our study, highly trained musicians (N= 16) judged whether or not novel musical phrases were closed (melodically or harmonically). Three stimulus series consisted of seven- note tunes with four possible endings: closed (tonic note or tonic chord), open/ diatonic (dominant chord or a member thereof), open/ chromatic (a chromatic note or chord outside the key of the melody), or open/white noise (a nonmusical control). One series included melodies alone, a second series included melodies harmonized, and a third series included melodies in which the melodic contexts were disrupted rather than the endings. In the recorded ERPs, a statistically significant negative drift in the waveforms occurred over the course of the context series, indicating anticipation of closure. The drift-corrected poststimulus waveforms for all series were subjected to a principal components analysis/analysis of variance. Two subject variables were also considered: sex and absolute pitch. All four stimulus types elicited identifiable responses. The waveform peaks for the four stimulus types are clearly differentiated by principal component analysis scores to two components: one with a maximum value at 273 ms and one with a maximum value at 471 ms. Taking the closed endings as the expected "standard," the waveforms for the two types of musical deviant endings were significantly below the standard at 273 ms and above the standard at 471 ms. The amount of negativity was proportional to the amount of deviance of the ending. The positive peak in the closed condition and the reduced peak in the open/diatonic condition are contrary to the normal inverse relationship between peak size and stimulus probability; the former agrees with peaks found in response to syntactic closure in language. Significant, though isolated, interactions involving both sex and absolute pitch also emerged.

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