Bilingual studies have shown that brain activities for first (L1) and second (L2) languages are influenced by L2 proficiency. Does proficiency with a second musical system (M2) influence bimusical brains in a manner similar to that of bilingual brains? Our magnetoencephalography study assessed the influence of M2 proficiency on the spatial, strength, and temporal properties of brain activity in a musical syntactic-processing task (i.e., tonal processing) involving first (M1) and second (M2) music systems. Two bimusical groups, differing in M2 proficiency (high, low), listened to melodies from both their M1 and M2 musical cultures. All melodies ended with a tonally consistent or inconsistent tone. In both groups, tonal deviations in both M1 and M2 elicited magnetic early right anterior negativities (mERANs) that were generated from brain areas around the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). We also analyzed the dipole locations, dipole strengths, and peak latencies of mERAN. Results revealed: (a) the distances between dipole locations for M1 and M2 were shorter in the M2 high-proficiency group than in the M2 low-proficiency group; (b) the dipole strengths were greater in the high than the low group; (c) the peak latencies of M2 were shorter in the high than low group. The dipole location results were consistent with those from bilingual studies in that the distances between the (left) IFG peak activations for L1 and L2 syntactic processing shortened as L2 proficiency increased. The parallel results for bimusicals and bilinguals suggest that the functional changes induced by proficiency in a second (linguistic or musical) system are defined by domain-general neural constraints.

Individuals who have been exposed to two different musical cultures (bimusicals) can be differentiated from those exposed to only one musical culture (monomusicals). Just as bilingual speakers handle the distinct language-syntactic rules of each of two languages, bimusical listeners handle two distinct musical-syntactic rules (e.g., tonal schemas) in each musical culture. This study sought to determine specific brain activities that contribute to differentiating two culture-specific tonal structures. We recorded magnetoencephalogram (MEG) responses of bimusical Japanese nonmusicians and amateur musicians as they monitored unfamiliar Western melodies and unfamiliar, but traditional, Japanese melodies, both of which contained tonal deviants (out-of-key tones). Previous studies with Western monomusicals have shown that tonal deviants elicit an early right anterior negativity (mERAN) originating in the inferior frontal cortex. In the present study, tonal deviants in both Western and Japanese melodies elicited mERANs with characteristics fitted by dipoles around the inferior frontal gyrus in the right hemisphere and the premotor cortex in the left hemisphere. Comparisons of the nature of mERAN activity to Western and Japanese melodies showed differences in the dipoles' locations but not in their peak latency or dipole strength. These results suggest that the differentiation between a tonal structure of one culture and that of another culture correlates with localization differences in brain subregions around the inferior frontal cortex and the premotor cortex.