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Representation of music genres based on the spectro-temporal modulation responses of the human brain

Music genre is an essential category for understanding human musical preferences and is provided based on the abstract categorization upon complex auditory stimuli. Previous neuroimaging studies have reported the involvement of the superior temporal gyrus (STG) in response to general music-related features. However, it remains largely unclear how abstract categories of music genre are represented in the brain and what acoustic features are more suited for explaining such representations. Here we examined comprehensive cortical representations and functional organization of music genres using 540 music clips. We applied a voxel-wise modeling approach to music-evoked brain activity measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We observed distinct cortical organizations for different music genres in the bilateral STG, which revealed the representational relationship between various music genres, e.g., classical and hip-hop music showed opposite representations. Representations of music genres were largely explained by spectro-temporal modulation, which was modeled by a biologically plausible spectro-temporal modulation-transfer function (MTF) model. Our results elucidate the quantitative representation of music genres in the human cortex and indicate the possibility of modeling our abstract categorization of complex auditory stimuli based on the brain activity. Significance statement Music genre is an essential category for understanding human preferences of music. However, it is largely unknown how abstract categories of music genre are represented in the brain. Here, we examined comprehensive cortical representations of music genres by building voxel-wise models of fMRI data collected while human subjects listened to 540 music clips. We found distinct cortical organizations for various music genres in the bilateral STG. Such genre-specific cortical organization was explained by the biologically plausible MTF model. The current study elucidates the quantitative representation of music genres in the human cortex for the first time and indicates the possibility of modeling our abstract categorization of complex auditory stimuli based on the brain activity.