PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Jason Warren
TI  - How does the brain process music?
AID  - 10.7861/clinmedicine.8-1-32
DP  - 2008 Feb 01
TA  - Clinical Medicine
PG  - 32--36
VI  - 8
IP  - 1
4099  - http://www.rcpjournals.org/content/8/1/32.short
4100  - http://www.rcpjournals.org/content/8/1/32.full
SO  - Clin Med2008 Feb 01; 8
AB  - The organisation of the musical brain is a major focus of interest in contemporary neuroscience. This reflects the increasing sophistication of tools (especially imaging techniques) to examine brain anatomy and function in health and disease, and the recognition that music provides unique insights into a number of aspects of nonverbal brain function. The emerging picture is complex but coherent, and moves beyond older ideas of music as the province of a single brain area or hemisphere to the concept of music as a ‘whole-brain’ phenomenon. Music engages a distributed set of cortical modules that process different perceptual, cognitive and emotional components with varying selectivity. ‘Why’ rather than ‘how’ the brain processes music is a key challenge for the future.