Sex Differences in Music: A Female Advantage at Recognizing Familiar Melodies.

Although sex differences have been observed in various cognitive domains, there has been little work examining sex differences in the cognition of music. We tested the prediction that women would be better than men at recognizing familiar melodies, since memories of specific melodies are likely to be learned (at least in part) by declarative memory, which shows female advantages. Participants were 24 men and 24 women, with half musicians and half non-musicians in each group. The two groups were matched on age, education, and various measures of musical training. Participants were presented with well-known and novel melodies, and were asked to indicate their recognition of familiar melodies as rapidly as possible. The women were significantly faster than the men in responding, with a large effect size. The female advantage held across musicians and non-musicians, and across melodies with and without commonly associated lyrics, as evidenced by an absence of interactions between sex and these factors. Additionally, the results did not seem to be explained by sex differences in response biases, or in basic motor processes as tested in a control task. Though caution is warranted given that this is the first study to examine sex differences in familiar melody recognition, the results are consistent with the hypothesis motivating our prediction, namely that declarative memory underlies knowledge about music (particularly about familiar melodies), and that the female advantage at declarative memory may thus lead to female advantages in music cognition (particularly at familiar melody recognition). Additionally, the findings argue against the view that female advantages at tasks involving verbal (or verbalizable) material are due solely to a sex difference specific to the verbal domain. Further, the results may help explain previously reported cognitive commonalities between music and language: since declarative memory also underlies language, such commonalities may be partly due to a common dependence on this memory system. More generally, because declarative memory is well studied at many levels, evidence that music cognition depends on this system may lead to a powerful research program generating a wide range of novel predictions for the neurocognition of music, potentially advancing the field.

DARPA-funded efforts in the development of novel brain-computer interface technologies.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has funded innovative scientific research and technology developments in the field of brain-computer interfaces (BCI) since the 1970s. This review highlights some of DARPA's major advances in the field of BCI, particularly those made in recent years. Two broad categories of DARPA programs are presented with respect to the ultimate goals of supporting the nation's warfighters: (1) BCI efforts aimed at restoring neural and/or behavioral function, and (2) BCI efforts aimed at improving human training and performance. The programs discussed are synergistic and complementary to one another, and, moreover, promote interdisciplinary collaborations among researchers, engineers, and clinicians. Finally, this review includes a summary of some of the remaining challenges for the field of BCI, as well as the goals of new DARPA efforts in this domain.

Double dissociation between rules and memory in music: an event-related potential study.

Language and music share a number of characteristics. Crucially, both domains depend on both rules and memorized representations. Double dissociations between the neurocognition of rule-governed and memory-based knowledge have been found in language but not music. Here, the neural bases of both of these aspects of music were examined with an event-related potential (ERP) study of note violations in melodies. Rule-only violations consisted of out-of-key deviant notes that violated tonal harmony rules in novel (unfamiliar) melodies. Memory-only violations consisted of in-key deviant notes in familiar well-known melodies; these notes followed musical rules but deviated from the actual melodies. Finally, out-of-key notes in familiar well-known melodies constituted violations of both rules and memory. All three conditions were presented, within-subjects, to healthy young adults, half musicians and half non-musicians. The results revealed a double dissociation, independent of musical training, between rules and memory: both rule violation conditions, but not the memory-only violations, elicited an early, somewhat right-lateralized anterior-central negativity (ERAN), consistent with previous studies of rule violations in music, and analogous to the early left-lateralized anterior negativities elicited by rule violations in language. In contrast, both memory violation conditions, but not the rule-only violation, elicited a posterior negativity that might be characterized as an N400, an ERP component that depends, at least in part, on the processing of representations stored in long-term memory, both in language and in other domains. The results suggest that the neurocognitive rule/memory dissociation extends from language to music, further strengthening the similarities between the two domains.