Significance of Brocaʹs Area and Ventral Premotor Cortex for Music-Syntactic Processing

This paper suggests that a cortical network comprising inferior frontolateral cortex [IFLC, corresponding to Brodmannʹs area (BA) 44], ventrolateral premotor cortex (vlPMC), and anterior superior temporal gyrus (aSTG) is involved in the processing of musical structure. This network presumably calculates harmonic relations between a chord and a preceding harmonic sequence, is involved in the detection of music-structural irregularities, and organizes fast short-term predictions of upcoming musical events.