Lawrence M. Parsons1, Evangelos T. Himonides2, Nyssa Craig3, Monica Vakil4, Robert S. Turner5, Iain D. Wilkinson6
1Psychology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK; 2Institute of Education,, University of London, London, UK; 3Radiology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK; 4Pediatrics, Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; 5Max Planck Institute of Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany; 6Radiology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK
We report a simultaneous dual fMRI study, using sparse temporal sampling, of pairs of musicians singing complex and simple folksongs. Each pair of duetters performed under three conditions: solo singing, singing in unison with a partner, and singing in unison with a computerized piano performance. Each pair of duetters performed all conditions twice, once in the 1.5 scanner and once in the 3T scanner. The results implicate a distributed set of brain areas involved in the online coordination of interactive entrainment of human duetters, and provide the basis for a wider use of simultaneous dual-scanning paradigms.