For this purpose, we acquired structural magnetic resonance images for each subject’s brain, and performed voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis to determine whether there are systematic brain differences in the synthetic variable ‘gray matter density’ (GMD) that correlate with inter-subject behavioral differences in the

assessment of dichotically dissonant music excerpts. We hypothesised that inter-subject differences in the assessment of the dichotic dissonant (DD) stimuli correspond to structural brain differences between participants as measured with VBM analyses. More specifically, we hypothesised that inter-subject differences in the assessment of the DD stimuli correspond BMS-354825 price to differences in GMD in the PARP cancer IC (probably due to differences

in anatomical volume), given its important role in the computation of pitch salience. Twenty right-handed non-musicians (10 females; range 20–30 years, mean age 25.03 years) participated in the study. None of them had any formal musical training except for normal school education. Nineteen of the 20 participants were from an academic background, 17 were students and two had already acquired a university degree. None of the participants played a musical instrument, but all were well-exposed to Western music. All participants reported having normal hearing. The experiments were undertaken with the understanding and written consent of each subject, and the study conformed to The Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki). The ethics committee of the University of Leipzig approved the study. The stimulus selection comprised 25 joyful instrumental tunes from the last four centuries

(major and minor key tonal music covering a wide variety of different styles) and their manipulated counterparts, resulting in three stimulus categories. Original (O) stiripentol music pieces. Manipulations of the O tunes, where a pitch-shifted version of the music (one semitone higher) was presented to the right ear, and the O stimulus to the left ear (DD stimulus). Note that, in this stimulus category, each ear was thus presented with consonant music. Diotic versions of the manipulations described above, where the pitch-shifted and O music were audible by both ears simultaneously, so that both ears were presented with exactly the same dissonant music signal (D).