Samenvatting

Mirror neurons in the cerebral cortex have been shown to fire not only during performance but also during visual and auditory observation of activity. This phenomenon is commonly called cerebral resonance behavior. This would mean that cortical motor regions would not only be activated while singing, but also while listening to music. The same should hold true for playing a music instrument. Although most individuals are able to sing along when they hear a melody, even highly skilled instrumentalists, however, are frequently unable to play by ear. They are score-dependent—i.e. they are only able to play a piece of music when they have access to the notes—while musicians who are able to play by ear and improvise are non score-dependent; they are able to play without notes. Our hypothesis is that score-dependent instrumentalists will exhibit less cerebral resonance behavior than non score-dependent musicians while listening to music. Using fMRI to measure BOLD response, subjects listen to two-part harmony presented with headphones. The following experimental conditions are distinguished: (1) well-known vs. unknown music (2) motor imagery vs. attentive listening. A voxelbased analysis of differences between the condition-related cerebral activations is performed using Statistical Parametric Mapping.