Singing in the brain

Boston - Neuroscientists have identified a population of neurons in the human brain that respond to singing, but not other types of music.

For the first time, neuroscientists have identified a population of neurons in the human brain that light up when we hear singing, but not other types of music.

For the first time, Massachusetts Institute of Technology neuroscientists have identified a population of neurons in the human brain that lights up when we hear singing, but not other types of music.

These neurons, found in the auditory cortex, appear to respond to the specific combination of voice and music, but not to either regular speech or instrumental music. Exactly what they are doing is unknown and will require more work to uncover, the researchers say.

The work builds on a 2015 study in which the same research team used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify a population of neurons in the brain's auditory cortex that responds specifically to music.

In the new work, the researchers used recordings of electrical activity taken at the surface of the brain, which gave them much more precise information than fMRI.

There's one population of neurons that responds to singing, and then very nearby is another population of neurons that responds broadly to lots of music.

At the scale of fMRI, they're so close that you can't disentangle them, but with intracranial recordings, we get additional resolution, and that's what we believe allowed us to pick them apart.