Mapping the contents of consciousness during musical imagery
bioRxiv Preprint Server November 20, 2020 Mor Regev, Andrea R. Halpern, Adrian M. Owen et al. preprint
When people imagine music they have previously memorized, the brain's auditory cortices show melody-specific activity patterns similar to those during actual listening. Functional MRI data from participants who memorized six one-minute instrumental pieces revealed that during silent imagery, these patterns reappeared in right associative auditory cortices. Adding rhythmic tapping while imagining extended the melody-specific neural patterns to both left and right associative cortices. The findings suggest that the contents of conscious auditory experience are encoded similarly during imagery and perception, and that rhythmic motion can enhance the reinstatement of neural patterns associated with complex sounds, supporting models of motor-to-sensory influences in auditory processing.