Our Brain Recognizes Musical Structures Even in Challenging Contexts
Even non-musicians can develop an implicit understanding of complex musical structures. (Image: MPIEA / L. Bittner)
Do we primarily understand and remember pieces of music through a regular form—or does our brain also recognize more complex musical structures? This question was explored by a research team involving the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA). The researchers investigated how people perceive musical phrases, that is, individual sections of music pieces, that could be seen as sentences in speech. The findings showed that listeners can reliably recognize the structure of musical phrases even when they are temporally irregular. Using EEG measurements, the researchers demonstrated that our brain processes musical structures independently of their temporal predictability. The study results were recently published in the European Journal of Neuroscience.
A total of 35 people took part in the study. The researchers asked them to listen to complex themes by Johann Sebastian Bach while recording their brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG). Two types of melodies were used: one with regularly structured, temporally predictable sections and another with irregular sections of varying lengths. However, both versions contained the same musical cues signaling transitions between sections—such as harmonic changes or shifts in melodic direction. The crucial difference was whether these transitions occurred at regular points in time. In addition, there was a control version in which the notes were rearranged randomly, altering the original musical structure. Participants first listened attentively to the music while their brain activity was recorded. In a second round, they were asked to indicate when they perceived the end of a musical phrase.
“The results were clear: participants recognized musical phrases similarly well in both regular and irregular patterns, and significantly better than in the control condition with randomly mixed tone sequences,” explains senior author Pauline Larrouy-Maestri from the MPIEA.
The EEG data also revealed differences: brain activity increased significantly around phrase boundaries in the first two test conditions. This indicates that participants actively tracked (or predicted) musical structures while listening, rather than reacting to what they heard. The participants were neither musicians nor did they possess extensive knowledge of classical music. Nevertheless, they were able to reliably parse melodies, following the rules of music theory. This confirms that the perception of musical structures does not require formal musical training, but is instead shaped through everyday exposure to music.
“Our results show that people develop an implicit understanding of musical structures simply by growing up in a music-rich environment,” concludes senior author Pauline Larrouy-Maestri. “The ability to process (and potentially to appreciate) music therefore appears to be rooted in cultural musical experience.”
Publication:
Hołubowska, A., Z., Teng, X., Larrouy-Maestri, P. (2026). Neural and Behavioral Tracking of Musical Phrases Occurs Without Temporal Regularity. European Journal of Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejn.70481
Contact:
