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MEG Evoked Power in Theta and Beta Frequency Band in Auditory Cortex Decodes Musical Perception and Imagery

Poster Session E - Monday, March 9, 2026, 2:30 – 4:30 pm PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Mi-young Chung¹ (), Charlotte Van Barr¹, Andrea R. Halpern², Robert J. Zatorre¹; ¹McGill University, ²Bucknell University

Imagery evokes perceptual-like experiences in the brain and mimics some of the neural activity of perception, resulting in shared neural activity of perception and imagery. This shared activity has been established in musical imagery studies, particularly highlighting the role of the secondary auditory cortex. In our prior EEG study, the evoked power— reflecting phase-locked activity in the brain corresponding to the event— in the theta and beta bands from temporal channels successfully decoded musical pitch imagery in musicians without Absolute Pitch. The current study uses MEG and 3T anatomical MRI to localize the brain sources of the evoked power that decodes musical pitch imagery specifically within the auditory cortex, including superior temporal gyrus, superior temporal sulcus, and Hechl’s gyrus, using dynamic Statistical Parametric Mapping method. Ten musicians listened to the first part of a melody, imagined its continuation, and completed a tone-matching task to determine if a test tone matched the actual continuation note of the melody. Decoding analysis using support vector machine was performed to classify each of seven diatonic imagined tones based on evoked spectral power in the theta and beta frequency bands from the auditory cortex. Preliminary decoding results show successful classification accuracy for imagined tones, significantly higher than the prior EEG study (average ~10% above chance). A similar trend was observed when this decoding algorithm was applied to perception. These findings emphasize the significance of phase-locked neural activity specifically in the auditory cortex, advancing our understanding of the neural basis of musical imagery.

Topic Area: PERCEPTION & ACTION: Audition