Differential cognitive responses to guqin music and piano music in Chinese subjects: an event-related potential study

Objective To compare the cognitive effects of guqin (the oldest Chinese instrument) music and piano music.Methods Behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) data in a standard two-stimulus auditory oddball task were recorded and analyzed.Results This study replicated the previous results of culture-familiar music effect on Chinese subjects: the greater P300 amplitude in frontal areas in a culture-familiar music environment. At the same time, the difference between guqin music and piano music was observed in N1 and later positive complex (LPC: including P300 and P500): a relatively higher participation of right anterior-temporal areas in Chinese subjects.Conclusion The results suggest that the special features of ERP responses to guqin music are the outcome of Chinese tonal language environments given the similarity between Guqinos tones and Mandarin lexical tones.