Language, music, and the brain: a resource-sharing framework

Abstract This chapter discusses a theoretical framework for the cognitive study of music-language relations called resource sharing. Resource sharing makes a basic conceptual distinction between domain-specific knowledge and shared neural resources that operate upon this knowledge as part of cognitive processing. This framework was originally proposed as a way to reconcile contradictory evidence on music-language relations with respect to syntactic processing, since neuropsychology had pointed to independence and neuroimaging had pointed to overlap. The chapter expands this framework, applying it to online processes of syntactic comprehension and to developmental processes involved in learning the phonemic structure of language. In both cases, resource sharing suggests that aspects of language and music, which are very different in their structural organization, can have deep connections in terms of cognitive processing.