Mental Reversal of Imagined Melodies: A Role for the Posterior Parietal Cortex

■ Two fMRI experiments explored the neural substrates of a musical imagery task that required manipulation of the imagined sounds: temporal reversal of a melody. Musicians were presented with the first few notes of a familiar tune (Experiment 1) or its title (Experiment 2), followed by a string of notes that was either an exact or an inexact reversal. The task was to judge whether the second string was correct or not by mentally reversing all its notes, thus requiring both maintenance and manipulation of the represented string. Both experiments showed considerable activation of the superior parietal lobe (intraparietal sulcus) during the reversal process. Ventrolateral and dorsolateral frontal cortices were also activated, consistent with the memory load required during the task. We also found weaker evidence for some activation of right auditory cortex in both studies, congruent with results from previous simpler music imagery tasks. We interpret these results in the context of oth...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: JOCN
• Authors: Robert J. Zatorre, Andrea R. Halpern, Marc Bouffard
• Keywords: Imagery Tasks, Intraparietal Sulcus, JOCN 2010, Musical Imagery Task