Auditory imagery
[2] Humans retain a relatively strong auditory image for details in pitch, which can be improved with musical training.
The development of cultivating an auditory image with absolute pitch, which is being able to determine a note upon hearing a sound, however, is dependent on childhood musical training and genetic factors.
According to Pitt and Crowder, the encoding of loudness into our auditory imagery was shown to have little correlation with any physiological neural factors.
Other scientists such as Intons-Petersons believe that there is encoding for loudness in our auditory images and that if so, it most likely occurs in a person's motor cortex.
This generally refers to imagining speech which can occur when trying to remember what someone said or the sound of their voice which can be elicited voluntarily or involuntarily.
In the study, univariate and multivariate analyses found distinct representation between auditory imagery and perception in the overlapping regions, including superior temporal gyrus and inferior frontal sulcus as well as the precentral cortex and pre-supplementary motor area.
[7] Cognitive scientists are very interested in finding out what brain structures are involved with mental imaging in order to provide consistent, localized, and more tangible evidence.
It was consistently found the prefrontal cortex and premotor cortical areas were active during the anticipation of auditory imagery.
[13] Musical training has consistently shown to be a powerful way to refine auditory imagery enabling people to discern and manipulate various characteristics of sound such as pitch, timbre, tempo, etc.
[14] Musical training can cause localized networks of neurons to fire synchronously a lot more easily through spatial temporal firing patterns (Hebbian theory), which may explain why non-musical auditory imagery is enhanced in musically trained subjects.
[16] Auditory imagery was accessed in 14 pianists to examine the relationship between individual differences and temporal coordination in piano duos.
The feedback suggested that coordination was not affected much by the visual contact they had but more by individual anticipatory auditory imagery.
The findings suggest "auditory imagery facilitates interpersonal coordination by enhancing the operation of internal models that simulate one's own and others' actions during ensemble performance.
There are different kinds of auditory imagery people experience in their dreams when waking up from rapid eye movement sleep.
Musicians have their sense of notational audiation significantly impaired during phonatory distractions due to the conflicting signals induced onto a single sensory modality.
[21] When normal subjects and schizophrenic subjects were both asked to generate an auditory image, schizophrenic patients were shown to have a much weaker activation of the posterior cerebral cortex, hippocampi, bilateral lenticular nuclei, right thalamus, middle and superior cortex, and left nucleus accumbens.
These areas are important to inner speech and verbal self-monitoring which may explain why schizophrenia is more likely to induce auditory hallucinations.
By improving a person's ability to manipulate their 'inner ear' and concept of auditory images they can learn and play music better on a shorter time scale with less effort.
