Experiencia musical, formación teórica y arquitectura neural: una revisión de la evidencia sobre músicos con y sin teoría musical formal
Experiencia musical, formación teórica y arquitectura neural: una revisión de la evidencia sobre músicos con y sin teoría musical formal
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.22533/at.ed.489122513114
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Palavras-chave: cognición musical; pericia musical; teoría musical; especialización hemisférica; codificación predictiva; sintaxis musical
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Keywords: musical cognition; musical expertise; music theory; hemispheric specialization; predictive coding; musical syntax
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Abstract:
Formal musical training usually integrates two complementary domains: instrumental practice and the acquisition of explicit theoretical knowledge, such as notation, harmony, and musical analysis. Although the neural correlates of musical expertise have been widely documented, a specific question remains underexplored: does training in music theory modulate brain organization and cognitive processing in ways that differentiate musicians with explicit theoretical knowledge from those who perform primarily in an intuitive manner?
This review synthesizes empirical findings from neuroanatomy, electrophysiology, auditory cognition, and predictive processing models to address this question. Evidence from studies on hemispheric specialization (Bever & Chiarello, 1974), auditory–motor coupling (Schlaug et al., 1995; Gaser & Schlaug, 2003), musical syntax processing (Koelsch et al., 2002), and predictive coding (Vuust et al., 2022) suggests that musicians share a common neurocognitive foundation shaped by intensive practice, while theoretical training introduces additional layers of syntactic, categorical, and hierarchical processing. Structural differences between theoretically trained and intuitive musicians remain largely unconfirmed, but functional distinctions in syntactic sensitivity, categorization, and hierarchical prediction receive stronger empirical support. A minimal conceptual model is proposed to integrate these findings.
- José Luis Bautista López