La musique, un bon outil pour étudier le cerveau

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D’énormes progrès ont été réalisés ces dernières années vers une compréhension de la perception musicale. Les processus neurologiques responsables de la perception ou de la production de musique sont communs à beaucoup d’autres régions. L’émotion provoquée par la musique peut être actuellement étudiée. En tant que tel, la musique promet de rester un outil intéressant pour l’étude du cerveau. Les bases biologiques de la musicalité humaine sont actuellement à l’étude. Les découvertes dans le domaine génétique, les nouveau gènes « candidats » impliquée dans notre musicalité vont probablement changer notre compréhension du « cerveau musical ».

Music as a good way to study the brainThe past decade has witnessed a rapid rise in cognitive and neuroscientific research on music. This review highlights recent studies that have utilized music as a tool for understanding brain structure and function. The paralimbic and neocortical brain regions have specific responses to conditions of musical consonance and dissonance. The musicians had a relative left lateralization of neural activation patterns for all rhythms in comparison to nonmusicians. Functional Neuroimaging studies using a variety of techniques : positron emission tomography, functional magnetic resonance imaging, demonstrates that novel use of music as a tool for the study of human auditory brain structure and function. These methods have shown a close relationship between the neural processing of music and language, both syntactically and semantically. For listeners who listen to musical passages, the functional imaging studies have also demonstrated the activation of primitive emotional centers. With the help of music, neural plasticity can also be studied. The most important principles of music therapy in neurology are becoming better defined. The neurological processes responsible for the collection or production of music are common to many other regions. The emotion caused by the music can currently be studied. As such, the music promises to remain an interesant tool for the study of the brain. Future studies of music are likely to be directed beyond musical perception.