Music effects on event-related potentials of humans on the basis of cultural environment

Auditory oddball responses were recorded from Turkish subjects in a silent environment or superimposed on white noise, or music played with violoncello or a similar music played with ney, a reed flute frequently listened by the Turkish population. P3 amplitudes with ney music in the background were significantly larger than both the white noise and violoncello backgrounds, The topography of the P3 response changed significantly between the ney and silent background conditions, indicating a relatively higher participation of frontal areas during hearing ney. Our results showed that hearing music of a familiar style increases the allocation of attentional resources during memory updating processes which is supposed to determine the P3 amplitude, and therefore showed the effects of cultural environment on the cognitive processes. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved