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Brain Stimulation Can Help Us Understand Music and Language

- Maansi Desai, Rachel Sorrells, Matthew K. Leonard, Edward F. Chang, & Liberty S. Hamilton

Two patients (also musicians) who needed brain surgery wanted to make sure that the parts of their brains that allowed them to play music would not be affected by their surgeries.
The patients were tested for language and music. Using ESM, we were able to investigate whether the same brain areas play a role in both speaking and playing music, or whether there were separate brain areas for each. To test language, both patients were asked to count slowly from 1 to 30, or until told to stop. They were also asked to repeat words. While they were speaking, the surgeon used ESM to stimulate small areas within the colored regions of the brain to see if the patients would make any mistakes. Each of these stimulation sites was tested between 1 and 18 times. For the music portion, the first patient was asked to play musical scales and a piano piece that he knew. The second patient strummed chords on a guitar. While the patients were performing these music tasks, the surgeons stimulated the same brain areas as tested in the language task.

License information: CC BY 4.0
MPAA: G
Go to source: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2020.00016

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