The processing of temporal structure has been widely investigated, but evidence on how the brain processes temporal and nontemporal structures simultaneously is sparse. Using event‐related potentials (ERPs), we examined how the brain responds to temporal (metric) and nontemporal (harmonic) structures in music simultaneously, and whether these processes are impacted by musical expertise. Fifteen musicians and 15 nonmusicians rated the degree of completeness of musical sequences with or without violations in metric or harmonic structures. In the single violation conditions, the ERP results showed that both musicians and nonmusicians exhibited an early right anterior negativity (ERAN) as well as an N5 to temporal violations (“when”), and only an N5‐like response to nontemporal violations (“what”), which were consistent with the behavioral results. In the double violation condition, however, only the ERP results, but not the behavioral results, revealed a significant interaction between temporal and nontemporal violations at a later integrative stage, as manifested by an enlarged N5 effect compared to the single violation conditions. These findings provide the first evidence that the human brain uses different neural mechanisms in processing metric and harmonic structures in music, which may shed light on how the brain generates predictions for “what” and “when” events in the natural environment.

中文翻译：

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人脑处理电表和和声的层次结构的方式有所不同：来自音乐家和非音乐家的证据。

时间结构的处理已被广泛研究，但是关于大脑如何同时处理时间和非时间结构的证据很少。使用事件相关电位（ERP），我们检查了大脑如何同时响应音乐中的时间（度量）和非时间（谐波）结构，以及这些过程是否受到音乐专业知识的影响。15位音乐家和15位非音乐家对音乐序列的完整性程度进行了评估，无论是否违反公制或谐波结构。在单一违规情况下，ERP结果表明，音乐家和非音乐家都表现出早期的右前负（ERAN）以及对时间违规的N5（“ when”），并且对非时间违规的反应只有N5样的反应（“什么”），这与行为结果一致。但是，在双重违规情况下，只有ERP结果，而不是行为结果，揭示了整合后期的时间违规和非时间违规之间的显着相互作用，这与单次违规条件相比，N5效应扩大了。这些发现提供了第一个证据，即人脑在处理音乐中的度量和和声结构时使用了不同的神经机制，这可能揭示了大脑如何对自然环境中“什么”和“什么时候”事件产生预测。