Musical priming by the right hemisphere post-callosotomy

The hemispheric representation of auditory functions mediating the perception of harmony in music was investigated in two split-brain patients using a musical chord priming task. Previous experiments in normal subjects had demonstrated that the harmonic context established by a prime chord influences the accuracy of target chord intonation judgements. Only the right hemisphere of each callosotomy patient manifested the normal interaction between harmonic relatedness and intonation. The results raise the possibility that associative auditory functions which generate expectancies for harmonic progression in music are lateralized within the right hemisphere.

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