Adults and children can recognize a wrong note in a simple melody. If one note of the simple five-note opening to The Star-Spangled Banner is played incorrectly, those who've heard the song before can instantly recognize that it is wrong. Westerners recognize standard chord progressions that are "wrong" even though they have never heard them before. Researchers link the phenomena of identifying the wrong note and identifying the wrong word (syntactically) to the same part of the brain, thereby demonstrating how music and words are intertwined.
