“..Music and lyrics: How the brain splits songs..”
“..Your favourite song comes on the radio.
You hum the tune; the lyrics remind you of someone you know.
Is your brain processing the words and music separately or as one?
It’s a hotly debated question that may finally have an answer.
People with aphasia, who can’t speak, can still hum a tune, suggesting music and lyrics are processed separately.
Yet brain scans show that music and language activate the same areas .. which might mean the brain treats them as one signal.
“There’s conflicting evidence,” says Daniela Sammler of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany.
Now Sammler and her team have discovered that both arguments may be partially true.
Her team worked out a way to determine when active regions were processing just music and when just lyrics ..
.. by studying a functional MRI brain scan of someone listening to songs..”
go to source/story>>Music and lyrics: How the brain splits songs - life - 09 March 2010 - New Scientist