FMRI/ERP of musical syntax: comparison of melodies and unstructured note sequences.

To date, the neural correlates of musical syntax processing have been investigated mainly by means of paradigms in which isolated chords are made incongruent with the harmonic context. Here, we present results obtained contrasting unfamiliar one-part piano melodies with unstructured note sequences, comparable in pitch and rhythm but devoid of any syntactic structure. This paradigm indexes a superset of the cognitive functions involved in processing of harmonic rules.