Neuroscience and Neurobiology Commons^™

Mental Reversal Of Imagined Melodies: A Role For The Posterior Parietal Cortex, Robert J. Zatorre, Andrea R. Halpern, Marc Bouffard

Faculty Journal Articles

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 …