Missouri Classical Music News and Notes

A US team from Dartmouth College, reported in the journal Nature, played volunteers tunes with snippets cut out.

They scanned for brain activity and found it centred in the auditory cortex - which handles information from ears.

When familiar tunes played, the cortex activity continued during the blanks - and the volunteers indeed said they still mentally "heard" the tunes.

After the experiment, the volunteers reported hearing a continuation of the song during the silent gaps when the tune was familiar, but not when the song was unfamiliar to them.

When the researchers looked at the brain scans they found the individuals had more activity in specific regions of the brain during the silent gaps when the song was familiar, than when it was an unknown tune.