Infants already demonstrate readiness for music processing. Although culture-specific music-processing skills are acquired through exposure to music, even in the absence of formal training, the processing of music sounds is known to be facilitated by music training from early on. Major vs. minor and consonance vs. dissonance categorisations have a central role in Western tonal music and are highly meaningful for Western listeners. However, their neural basis and its development have not been extensively studied. The present thesis examined the preattentive processing of Western music chord categorisations from infancy to adulthood by measuring event-related potentials (ERPs) of the electroencephalogram (EEG), using a mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm. The effect of music expertise on their processing was studied in school-aged children and adults. In the MMN paradigm, minor chords, inverted major chords, and highly dissonant chords were presented infrequently as deviant sounds in the context of root form major chords. Since all chords were transposed to several frequency levels, the deviant chords introduced no new frequencies to the paradigm, and thus an MMN caused by simple physical deviance was prevented. The results demonstrate the facilitating effects of music expertise on Western music chord discrimination neurally in adults and school-aged children, and behaviourally in adults. Sensitivity to Western music chord categorisations, particularly consonance vs. dissonance, was evident already at birth. While there was no evidence of major vs. minor discrimination as indicated by MMN elicitation in school-aged children without music training, there was tentative evidence of it in newborn infants and non-musician adults. Only musician adults demonstrated sensitivity to root vs. inverted chords, indicating that the facilitating effect of music expertise on the neural processing of the chords grows with age and years of practice. The present thesis suggests that, building on early auditory skills, some implicit knowledge of Western music chord categorisations is acquired via exposure to music during development, without formal training. However, consistent neural representations of complex chord categories may require extensive amounts of formal music training.
Infants already demonstrate readiness for music processing. Although culture-specific music-processing skills are acquired through exposure to music, even in the absence of formal training, the processing of music sounds is known to be facilitated by music training from early on. Major vs. minor and consonance vs. dissonance categorisations have a central role in Western tonal music and are highly meaningful for Western listeners. However, their neural basis and its development have not been extensively studied. The present thesis examined the preattentive processing of Western music chord categorisations from infancy to adulthood by measuring event-related potentials (ERPs) of the electroencephalogram (EEG), using a mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm. The effect of music expertise on their processing was studied in school-aged children and adults. In the MMN paradigm, minor chords, inverted major chords, and highly dissonant chords were presented infrequently as deviant sounds in the context of root form major chords. Since all chords were transposed to several frequency levels, the deviant chords introduced no new frequencies to the paradigm, and thus an MMN caused by simple physical deviance was prevented. The results demonstrate the facilitating effects of music expertise on Western music chord discrimination neurally in adults and school-aged children, and behaviourally in adults. Sensitivity to Western music chord categorisations, particularly consonance vs. dissonance, was evident already at birth. While there was no evidence of major vs. minor discrimination as indicated by MMN elicitation in school-aged children without music training, there was tentative evidence of it in newborn infants and non-musician adults. Only musician adults demonstrated sensitivity to root vs. inverted chords, indicating that the facilitating effect of music expertise on the neural processing of the chords grows with age and years of practice. The present thesis suggests that, building on early auditory skills, some implicit knowledge of Western music chord categorisations is acquired via exposure to music during development, without formal training. However, consistent neural representations of complex chord categories may require extensive amounts of formal music training.
