Cerebral lateralization of familiar and unfamiliar music perception in nonmusicians: a dual task approach.

In a dual task procedure that controls for attentional trade-off effects, asymmetrical interference effects were observed in dual task conditions of finger tapping and concurrent processing of familiar and unfamiliar music. Laterality effects suggested that perception of orchestral presentations is largely lateralized to the left hemisphere in both males and females. In a second dual task condition of vocalization and music processing, both males and females displayed interference in speech production during concurrent music processing. Males showed greater left hemispheric interference effects during simultaneous vocalization and music processing.