In an fMRI study of music perception, auditory cortex activation was observed during which condition?

• A. Listening to songs with lyrics
• B. Listening to songs without lyrics
• C. Listening to unfamiliar songs
• D. Silence gap when imagining music

Answer: (D)

Auditory cortex can be driven not only by sound entering the ears but also by internal mental imagery. In this study, when participants kept silent and vividly imagined a melody during those gaps, the auditory cortex still showed activation. That means the brain’s sensory areas were recruited by top-down processes that generate and manipulate auditory representations without actual auditory input.

This finding is meaningful because it shows how closely imagined sounds can engage the same neural machinery as real sounds, supporting the idea that mental imagery and perception share overlapping brain networks. While listening to songs with or without lyrics would produce strong activation due to processing actual sound, the silent period where participants imagined music isolates internal generation and demonstrates that imagination alone can evoke sensory cortex activity.