Music Processing: Left Hemisphere Functions and Right Hemisphere Functions
In broad terms, the evidence on brain lateralization in music processing indicates the following (Table 1):
TABLE 1 Brain Lateralization In Music Processing
| Left hemisphere (connected to right ear and right side of body) processes: |
Right hemisphere (connected to left ear and left side of body) processes: |
- Time-based elements of music (rhythm) using sequence-processing modules
- Rhythmic aspects of melody
- Rapidly-changing information such as speech—sequences of words.
|
- Pitch-based elements such as the shape of a melody (melodic contour) and tonal patterns
- Harmony; the right hemisphere is better at spatial cognition; in a sense, the right hemisphere processes pitch and harmony as “spatial” elements of sound
- The emotional tone of voice (via the left ear, which is connected to the right hemisphere) better than the left hemisphere
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