Factors inducing complexities in musical embedded structure processing

The organizational structure of music is similar to that found in language, involving a large number of complicated hierarchical and embedded structures. The factors inducing complexities and difficulties in embedded structure processing are important subjects of inquiry in areas of cognitive neuroscience, such as music and language domains. Enlightened by relevant linguistic theories, this study investigated the influence of dependency lengthening and structural shift on musical embedded sequences processing. Results showed that final chords in sequences with long dependence elicited larger ERAN and N5 under near-key shift conditions, while elicited larger ERAN and LPC under far-key shift conditions, when compared to the sequences with short dependence; Further, the final chords in sequences with far-key shift elicited larger N5 under short dependence conditions, while elicited larger LPC under long dependence conditions when compared to the sequences with near-key shift. These results indicate that both dependency lengthening and structure shift could be the factors inducing complexities and difficulties in the processing of musical embedded structures, and there might be some common mechanisms underlying the processing of center-embedded structure across music and language domains.