Une nouvelle fenêtre sur les fonctions cognitives des nourrissons.

Abstract

The understanding of the functional organisation of cerebral structures underlying receptive and expressive musical processes is confronted with a large variety of difficulties inherent in the artistic and subjective nature of the musical experience. Yet, clarifying the relationships between music and the brain is a legitimate goal of scientific research. One approach toward this goal is the study of musicians, such as Maurice Ravel, who suffered brain damage, and an analysis of their deficits make it possible to uncover some characteristics of these relationships, to identify the essential questions raised by these deficits, and to suggest some hypotheses about the neurofunctional anatomy of musical abilities. New developments in brain imaging such as positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance allow these hypotheses to be subjected to empirical verification. Results from such investigation indicate that the realization of musical abilities such as sight-reading and piano performance relies on a distributed neuronal network that encompasses the four cerebral lobes and the cerebellum, and it involves cerebral structures which are adjacent to, but distinct from, those underlying the realization of corresponding cognitive operations in the verbal domain.