Music specific responses within the temporal lobe

Abstract: During the presentation, I will present the findings of a current study in which we investigate if there are any areas within the temporal lobe that respond preferentially to the presentation of musical stimuli. We compare the cortical activity (as seen with fMRI) secondary to the presentation of musical excerpts and contrast it to the activity seen following other complex non-musical sounds (coughs, sneezes, car sounds, speech in several languages, etc). Furthermore, we investigated if these differences in activity are more pronounced in professional musicians than non-musicians.

Bio: Luis Concha obtained his M.D. in Mexico, after which he moved to Edmonton, Canada, and obtained his Ph.D. in Medical Sciences/Biomedial Engineering at the University of Alberta, where he worked under the supervision of Drs. Christian Beaulieu and Donald W. Gross in the fields of DTI and epilepsy. He continued his work at the Montreal Neurological Institute, where he did his postdoctoral fellowship with Drs. Neda and Andrea Bernasconi. Since January, 2010 he is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Neurobiology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where he began his work in the field of music and fMRI in close collaboration with BRAMS (Drs. Peretz and Armony).