Melodic differences in brain responses vanish once the sustained field is removed

Evidence

In this posterior source, the responses to the initial note of the tonic and melodic sequences is virtually identical (t max = 21.81, p = 0.688). Small differences are observed between the tonic and melodic responses to the second and succeeding notes in the unfiltered data. However, they are mainly due to a small difference in the SF which is not itself significant. When the SF is removed by filtering, the differences between the source waves are minimal. Thus, the SF in the posterior source does not differ for melodic sequences. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 4718

Categorization

• SHARE: A good example for a cognitive-neuroscience colleague: apparent melodic modulation of source waves is largely an artifact of a nonsignificant sustained-field difference, not real melodic coding.