Persistent responsiveness of long-latency auditory cortical activities in response to repeated stimuli of musical timbre and vowel sounds.

Long-latency auditory-evoked magnetic field and potential show strong attenuation of N1m/N1 responses when an identical stimulus is presented repeatedly due to adaptation of auditory cortical neurons. This adaptation is weak in subsequently occurring P2m/P2 responses, being weaker for piano chords than single piano notes. The adaptation of P2m is more suppressed in musicians having long-term musical training than in nonmusicians, whereas the amplitude of P2 is enhanced preferentially in musicians as the spectral complexity of musical tones increases. To address the key issues of whether such high responsiveness of P2m/P2 responses to complex sounds is intrinsic and common to nonmusical sounds, we conducted a magnetoencephalographic study on participants who had no experience of musical training, using consecutive trains of piano and vowel sounds. The dipole moment of the P2m sources located in the auditory cortex indicated significantly suppressed adaptation in the right hemisphere both to piano and vowel sounds. Thus, the persistent responsiveness of the P2m activity may be inherent, not induced by intensive training, and common to spectrally complex sounds. The right hemisphere dominance of the responsiveness to musical and speech sounds suggests analysis of acoustic features of object sounds to be a significant function of P2m activity.