Music score elicits neuronal activation in the temporal region

Effects of long-period musical training from childhood on the brain have been studied psychologically [1], anatomically [2], and functionally [36]. Absolute pitch, which is the ability to identify the note of a tone without any reference, is one of the most outstanding results of musical training. It seems that possessors of the absolute pitch have a memory of musical pitch in their brain. A PET study on musicians reported the brain regions, which were activated by musical tone-interval judgment task [7]. To our knowledge, there is no report on the time course of the brain activation during pitch recalling. On the other hand, some absolute pitch possessors claimed that they need help of the name of the tone when they sing a song with correct pitch. Such internal experience suggests a relationship between the memory of pitch and language. In this study, we investigated the neural activities while absolute pitch possessors recalled the pitch memory by MEG that has high spatio-temporal resolution.