Fig. 1.

Diagrammatic representation of the experimental fMRI paradigm. Three runs were acquired, each with 4 conditions: 3 sound conditions (noise, fixed-pitch, varying-pitch) and 1 silent or baseline condition. Conditions were presented randomly in each run. The order of the conditions' presentation in each run was: 1 2 3 4 in run 1; 4 2 3 1 in run 2; and 2 3 1 4 in run 3. Condition 1 = noise, Condition 2 = fixed-pitch, Condition 3 = varying pitch and Condition 4 = silence. A sparse acquisition was used in which a stimulus is presented for 8 s while the MRI scanner is paused, followed by 3 s of data acquisition. The timings in the diagram are approximated; precise timings are reported in the Methods section.