Correlation of EEG Responses Reflects Structural Similarity of Choruses in Popular Music

Music structure analysis is a core topic in Music Information Retrieval and could be advanced through the inclusion of new data modalities. In this study we consider neural correlates of music structure processing using popular music - specifically choruses of Bollywood songs - and the {NMED-H} electroencephalographic (EEG) dataset. Motivated by recent findings that listeners' EEG responses correlate when hearing a shared music stimulus, we investigate whether responses correlate not only within single choruses but across pairs of chorus instances as well. We find statistically significant correlations within and across several chorus instances, suggesting that brain responses synchronize across structurally matched music segments even if they are not contextually or acoustically identical. Correlations were only occasionally higher within than across choruses. Our findings advance the state of the art of naturalistic music neuroscience, while also highlighting a novel approach for further studies of music structure analysis and audio understanding more broadly.