Spatiotemporal brain dynamics during recognition of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach

Music is a universal non-verbal human language, built on logical structures and articulated in balanced hierarchies between sounds, offering excellent opportunities to explore how the brain creates meaning for complex spatiotemporal auditory patterns. Using the high temporal resolution of magnetoencephalography in 70 participants, we investigated their unfolding brain dynamics during the recognition of Johann Sebastian Bach’s original musical patterns compared to new variations thereof. Remarkably, the recognition of Bach’s original music ignited a widespread music processing brain network comprising primary auditory cortex, superior temporal gyrus, insula, frontal operculum, cingulate gyrus, orbitofrontal cortex, basal ganglia and hippocampus. Furthermore, both activity and connectivity increased over time, following the evolution and unfolding of Bach’s original patterns. This study shed new light on brain activity and connectivity dynamics underlying auditory patterns recognition, highlighting the crucial role of fast neural phase synchronization underlying meaningful, complex cognitive processes.