Psychology of timbre processing Are there any studies concerning the psychological aspects of timbre processing in the brain, e.g. while listening to music? In particular, can any lower-level correlates be discerned when trying to answer questions like:


what makes particular timbres more pleasing than others? (e.g. a trumpet vs pure sine wave)
what accounts for different preferences between people? (e.g. preference for piano sound over trumpet)
For a general discussion of neural correlates of music perception, check out the review by Koelsch et al (2005).

Menon et al (2002) provide a starting point for learning about neural correlates of timbre processing. I quote the abstract. But have a look at the article for more info


  Timbre is a major structuring force in music and one of the most
  important and ecologically relevant features of auditory events. We
  used sound stimuli selected on the basis of previous
  psychophysiological studies to investigate the neural correlates of
  timbre perception. Our results indicate that both the left and right
  hemispheres are involved in timbre processing, challenging the
  conventional notion that the elementary attributes of musical
  perception are predominantly lateralized to the right hemisphere.
  Signiﬁcant timbre-related brain activation was found in well-de- ﬁned
  regions of posterior Heschl’s gyrus and superior temporal sulcus,
  extending into the circular insular sulcus. Although the extent of
  activation was not signiﬁcantly different between left and right
  hemispheres, temporal lobe activations were signiﬁcantly posterior in
  the left, compared to the right, hemisphere, suggesting a functional
  asymmetry in their respective contributions to timbre processing. The
  implications of our ﬁndings for music processing in particular and
  auditory processing in general are discussed.


Halpern et al (2004) provide another relevant study:


  The generality of findings implicating secondary auditory areas in
  auditory imagery was tested by using a timbre imagery task with fMRI.
  Another aim was to test whether activity in supplementary motor area
  (SMA) seen in prior studies might have been related to
  subvocalization. Participants with moderate musical background were
  scanned while making similarity judgments about the timbre of heard or
  imagined musical instrument sounds. The critical control condition was
  a visual imagery task. The pattern of judgments in perceived and
  imagined conditions was similar, suggesting that perception and
  imagery access similar cognitive representations of timbre. As
  expected, judgments of heard timbres, relative to the visual imagery
  control, activated primary and secondary auditory areas with some
  right-sided asymmetry. Timbre imagery also activated secondary
  auditory areas relative to the visual imagery control, although less
  strongly, in accord with previous data. Significant overlap was
  observed in these regions between perceptual and imagery conditions.
  Because the visual control task resulted in deactivation of auditory
  areas relative to a silent baseline, we interpret the timbre imagery
  effect as a reversal of that deactivation. Despite the lack of an
  obvious subvocalization component to timbre imagery, some activity in
  SMA was observed, suggesting that SMA may have a more general role in
  imagery beyond any motor component.


References


Menon, V., Levitin, D. J., Smith, B. K., Lembke, A., Krasnow, B. D., Glazer, D., ... &amp; McAdams, S. (2002). Neural correlates of timbre change in harmonic sounds. Neuroimage, 17(4), 1742-1754. PDF
Halpern, A. R., Zatorre, R. J., Bouffard, M., &amp; Johnson, J. A. (2004). Behavioral and neural correlates of perceived and imagined musical timbre. Neuropsychologia, 42(9), 1281-1292. PDF
Koelsch, S., &amp; Siebel, W. A. (2005). Towards a neural basis of music perception. Trends in cognitive sciences, 9(12), 578-584. Koelsch, S., &amp; Siebel, W. A. (2005). Towards a neural basis of music perception. Trends in cognitive sciences, 9(12), 578-584. HTML