Thalamic Multisensory integration: Creating a neural network map of involved brain areas in music perception, processing and execution

Music activates a wide array of neural areas involved in different functions besides the perception, processing and execution of music itself. Understanding musical processes in the brain has had multiple implications in the neuro- and health sciences.
Engaging the brain with a multisensory stimulus such as music activates responses beyond the temporal lobe. Brain networks involve the frontal lobes, parietal lobes, the limbic system such as the Amygdala, Hippocampus and thalamus, the cerebellum and the brainstem. Nonetheless, there has been no attempt to summarise all involved brain areas in music into one overall encompassing map. This may well be, as there has been no thorough theory introduced, which would allow an initial point of departure in creating such a atlas.
A thorough systematic review has been therefore conducted together with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify all mentioned neural connection involved in the perception, processing and execution of music.
Tracing the direct responses in the involved brain regions back to its origin (the incoming stimulus through the cochlea), neural tracks lead nearly exclusively via the thalamic nuclei. Communication between the thalamic nuclei is the initial step in multisensory integration, which lies at the base of the neural networks as proposed in this paper. Against this backdrop, this manuscript introduces the to our knowledge first thorough map of all involved brain regions in the perception, processing and execution of music, out of the general need of such a map and the knowledge, which can be gained from it.
Consequently, placing thalamic multisensory integration at the core of this atlas allowed to create a preliminary theory to explain the complexity of music induced brain activation, ergo a consecutive network encompassing and explaining the connections between all areas and not only areas of interest in the singularity of different strains of music related research.