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This study explored the role of culture in shaping music perception and memory. We tested the hypothesis that listeners demonstrate different patterns of activation associated with music processing—particularly right frontal cortex—when encoding and retrieving culturally familiar and unfamiliar stimuli, with the latter evoking broader activation consistent with more complex memory tasks. Subjects (n = 16) were right-handed adults born and raised in the USA (n = 8) or Turkey (n = 8) with minimal music training. Using fMRI procedures, we scanned subjects during two tasks: (i) listening to novel musical examples from their own culture and an unfamiliar culture and (ii) identifying which among a series of brief excerpts were taken from the longer examples. Both groups were more successful remembering music of their home culture. We found greater activation for culturally unfamiliar music listening in the left cerebellar region, right angular gyrus, posterior precuneus and right middle frontal area extending into the inferior frontal cortex. Subjects demonstrated greater activation in the cingulate gyrus and right lingual gyrus when engaged in recall of culturally unfamiliar music. This study provides evidence for the influence of culture on music perception and memory performance at both a behavioral and neurological level. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The popular view of music as a “universal” language ignores the privileged position of the cultural insider in comprehending musical information unique to their own tradition. The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that listeners would demonstrate different neural activity in response to culturally familiar and unfamiliar music and that those differences may be affected by the extent of subjects'' formal musical training. Just as familiar languages have been shown to use distinct brain processes, we hypothesized that an analogous difference might be found in music and that it may depend in part on subjects'' formal musical knowledge. Using fMRI we compared the activation patterns of professional musicians and untrained controls reared in the United States as they listened to music from their culture (Western) and from an unfamiliar culture (Chinese). No overall differences in activation were observed for either subject group in response to the two musical styles, although there were differences in recall performance based on style and there were activation differences based on training. Trained listeners demonstrated additional activation in the right STG for both musics and in the right and left midfrontal regions for Western music and Chinese music, respectively. Our findings indicate that listening to culturally different musics may activate similar neural resources but with dissimilar results in recall performance. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Discusses the existence of a musical culture in ensembles. Strengths of school ensembles; Significant way of comprehending culture according to ethnomusicologist Bruno Nettl; Cultural themes that manifest in the school ensemble.