Musique, syntaxe et sémantique : des ressources d’intégration structurale et temporelle partagées?

Numerous behavioral, neurophysiological and neuropsychological studies have investigated the specificity of music and language processing. While some studies suggested independent processes, other studies revealed common neural resources and interactive influences for music and language. Patel (2003) proposed that music and language share neural resources for processes linked to the structural integration of events, notably for musical and linguistic syntactic processing ("Shared Syntactic Integration Resource Hypothesis”, SSIRH). The SSIRH has led to a series of studies suggesting more consistent interactive influences between music and syntax than between music and semantics. Based on a review of the literature, the present article aims to reconcile the data from the literature about music and language processing, by proposing a hypothesis of shared structural and temporal integration resources for music, syntax and semantics.