Left Inferior Frontal Cortex

The left inferior frontal cortex plays a crucial role in hierarchical, syntactical, processing of language.  It was predicted by A. D. Patel in his paper, Language, music, syntax and the brain,that this area of the brain that would also be activated when listening to music (due to processing of its syntactical properties, see the figure in Hierarchical Structures in Music).  Experiments were done by D. Levitin and V. Menon that confirmed Patel's prediction.  Click here for a downloadable copy of their paper, Musical structure is processed in ``language'' areas of the brain: a possible role for Brodman Area 47 in temporal coherence.