Musicians and the gamma band: a secret affair?

While listening to music, a significant high degree of phase synchrony in the gamma frequency range globally distributed over the brain was found in subjects with musical training (musicians) compared with subjects with no such training (nonmusicians). No significant differences were found in other EEG frequency bands. Listening to neutral text did not produce any significant differences in the degree of synchronization between these two groups. For musicians, left-hemispheric dominance was found during listening to music. The right hemisphere was found to be dominant for non-musicians in text listening. The high degree of synchronization in musicians could be due to their high ability to retrieve musical patterns from their acoustic memory, which is a cogent condition for both listening to and anticipating musical sounds. NeuroReport 12:371-374 (C) 2001 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.