Consonance and dissonance are basic phenomena in the perception of chords that can be discriminated very early in sensory processing. Musical expertise has been shown to facilitate neural processing of various musical stimuli, but it is unclear whether this applies to detecting consonance and dissonance. Our study aimed to determine if sensitivity to increasing levels of dissonance differs between musicians and nonmusicians, using a combination of neural (electroencephalographic mismatch negativity, MMN) and behavioral measurements (conscious discrimination). Furthermore, we wanted to see if focusing attention to the sounds modulated the neural processing. We used chords comprised of either highly consonant or highly dissonant intervals and further manipulated the degree of dissonance to create two levels of dissonant chords. Both groups discriminated dissonant chords from consonant ones neurally and behaviorally. The magnitude of the MMN differed only marginally between the more dissonant and the less dissonant chords. The musicians outperformed the nonmusicians in the behavioral task. As the dissonant chords elicited MMN responses for both groups, sensory dissonance seems to be discriminated in an early sensory level, irrespective of musical expertise, and the facilitating effects of musicianship for this discrimination may arise in later stages of auditory processing, appearing only in the behavioral auditory task.

中文翻译：

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音乐专业知识有助于在行为上而不是在早期感觉水平上检测不和谐

和谐和不和谐是和弦感知中的基本现象，可以在感觉处理的早期进行区分。音乐专业知识已被证明可以促进各种音乐刺激的神经处理，但尚不清楚这是否适用于检测协和和不和谐。我们的研究旨在确定音乐家和非音乐家对不和谐程度增加的敏感性是否不同，使用神经（脑电图失配负性，MMN）和行为测量（有意识的辨别）的组合。此外，我们想看看将注意力集中在声音上是否会调节神经处理。我们使用由高度辅音或高度不和谐音程组成的和弦，并进一步操纵不和谐的程度以创建两个层次的不和谐和弦。两组在神经和行为上都区分了不和谐的和弦和辅音的和弦。MMN 的幅度在不和谐和不和谐的和弦之间仅略有不同。音乐家在行为任务中的表现优于非音乐家。由于不和谐的和弦引发了两组的 MMN 反应，感觉不和谐似乎在早期的感觉水平上被区分，无论音乐专业知识如何，音乐技巧对这种区分的促进作用可能出现在听觉处理的后期阶段，只出现在行为听觉任务。