Tone Deafness Research Articles

Tone Deafness in Music Does Not Preclude Distributional Learning of Nonnative Tonal Languages in Individuals With Congenital Amusia.

Previous studies have shown that individuals with congenital amusia exhibit deficient pitch processing across music and language domains. This study investigated whether adult Chinese-speaking listeners with amusia were still able to learn Thai lexical tones based on stimulus frequency of statistical distribution via distributional learning, despite their degraded lexical tone perception. Following a pretest-training-posttest design, 21 amusics and 23 typical, musically intact listeners were assigned into bimodal and unimodal distribution conditions. Listeners were asked to discriminate minimal pairs of Thai mid-level tone and falling tone superimposed on variable base syllables and uttered by different speakers. The perceptual accuracy for each test session and improvement from pretest to posttest were collected and analyzed between the two groups using generalized mixed-effects models. When discriminating Thai lexical tones, amusics were less accurate than typical listeners. Nonetheless, similarly to control listeners, perceptual gains from pretest to posttest were observed in bimodally rather than unimodally trained amusics, as evidenced by both trained and nontrained test words. Amusics are able to learn lexical tones in a second or foreign context of speech. This extends previous research by showing that amusics' distributional learning of linguistic pitch remains largely preserved despite their degraded pitch processing. It is thus likely that manifestations of amusia in speech could not result from their abnormal statistical learning mechanism. This study meanwhile provides a heuristic approach for future studies to apply this paradigm into amusics' treatment to mitigate their pitch-processing disorder.

Distributional learning of musical pitch despite tone deafness in individuals with congenital amusia

Congenital amusia is an innate and lifelong deficit of music processing. This study investigated whether adult listeners with amusia were still able to learn pitch-related musical chords based on stimulus frequency of statistical distribution, i.e., via distributional learning. Following a pretest-training-posttest design, 18 amusics and 19 typical, musically intact listeners were assigned to bimodal and unimodal conditions that differed in distribution of the stimuli. Participants' task was to discriminate chord minimal pairs, which were transposed to a novel microtonal scale. Accuracy rates for each test session were collected and compared between the two groups using generalized mixed-effects models. Results showed that amusics were less accurate than typical listeners at all comparisons, thus corroborating previous findings. Importantly, amusics-like typical listeners-demonstrated perceptual gains from pretest to posttest in the bimodal condition (but not the unimodal condition). The findings reveal that amusics' distributional learning of music remains largely preserved despite their deficient music processing. Implications of the results for statistical learning and intervention programs to mitigate amusia are discussed.

Musical hearing and the acquisition of foreign-language intonation

The present study seeks to determine whether superior musical hearing is correlated with successful production of second language (L2) intonation patterns. Fifty Polish speakers of English at the university level were recorded before and after an extensive two-semester accent training course in English. Participants were asked to read aloud a series of short dialogues containing different intonation patterns, complete two musical hearing tests measuring tone deafness and melody discrimination, and a survey regarding musical experience. We visually analyzed and assessed participants’ intonation by comparing their F0 contours with the model provided by their accent training teachers following ToBI (Tones and Break Indices) guidelines and compared the results with the musical hearing test scores and the survey responses. The results suggest that more accurate pitch perception can be related to more correct production of L2 intonation patterns as participants with superior musical ear produced more native-like speech contours after training, similar to those of their teachers. After dividing participants into four categories based on their musical hearing test scores and musical experience, we also observed that some students with better musical hearing test scores were able to produce more correct L2 intonation patterns. However, students with poor musical hearing test scores and no musical background also improved, suggesting that the acquisition of L2 intonation in a formal classroom setting can be successful regardless of one’s musical hearing skills.

Interview With Launette Woolforde, EdD, DNP, RN, NEA-BC, NPD-BC, FAAN

Interview With Launette Woolforde, EdD, DNP, RN, NEA-BC, NPD-BC, FAAN

Music to My Ear: Will Be Able to Recognize the Musical Notes Better When Using Only the Left Ear?

"Tone deafness refers to a condition where a person is unable to distinguish between different musical notes. Afflicted persons are not able to recognize the difference when 2 different musical notes are played. This inability is not caused by a lack of musical knowledge or training but is instead caused by genetic inheritance or brain damage. Tone deafness is a disability that is shown in music only. People who are tone deaf do not have a problem in recognizing the different intonations in human speech. This disability is also associated with the inability to follow musical rhythms and recognize songs. In this paper, we propose the ability of participants to recognize and repeat the musical notes that they hear. Testing was done using only the left ear, only the right ear, and both ears. Keywords: Music, Tone Deaf, Genetic Inheritance, Intonation. "

Face recognition and memory in congenital amusia.

Congenital amusia, commonly known as tone deafness, is a lifelong impairment of music perception and production. It remains a question of debate whether the impairments in musical domain observed in congenital amusia are paralleled in other non-musical perceptual abilities. Using behavioral measures in two experiments, the current study explored face perception and memory in congenital amusics. Both congenital amusics and matched controls performed a face perception task (Experiment 1) and an old/novel object memory task (for both faces and houses, Experiment 2). The results showed that the congenital amusic group had significantly slower reaction times than that in matched control group when identifying whether two faces presented together were the same or different. For different face-pairs, the deficit was greater for upright faces compared with inverted faces. For object memory task, the congenital amusic group also showed worse memory performance than the control group. The results of the present study suggest that the impairment attributed to congenital amusia is not only limited to music, but also extends to visual perception and visual memory domain.

Online evaluation of congenital amusia (tone deafness) in paediatric stuttering individuals

Introduction: Congenital amusia is a neurological dysfunction which is defined as an anomaly in pitch processing. This dysfunction might negatively affect individuals’ pitch perception in both musical contexts and in speaking.Methods: In this study, an on-line MBEA test is used in order to evaluate musical pitch perception of 38 stutterers who receive speech therapy and 31 stutterers who do not receive speech therapy, in comparison with 70 fluent speaking individuals.Results: Between online MBEA scores of speech therapy receiving group and non- speech therapy group, any statistically substantial relation could not be detected (p > .05). Speech therapy receiving group scored better in online MBEA test that non- speech therapy group. Especially, together with the decrease in intensity of stuttering, the mean average of the test increases. A statistically substantial relation between the online MBEA scores of stutterer groups and the control group has been detected (p > .05). A linear relationship was seen between patients’ age and online MBEA scores, at the rate of 28.3%.Conclusions: With accordance to findings in the study, it has been hypothesized that stuttering individuals might have problems in terms of musical pitch perception.HighlightsIndividuals who stuttering has tone deafnessThe Tone Deafness Evaluation Test will be an alternate evaluation instrument for developmental stuttering.

Everyday Words and the Character of Prose in Nineteenth-Century Britain by Jonathan Farina

Reviewed by: Everyday Words and the Character of Prose in Nineteenth-Century Britain by Jonathan Farina Michael Hollington Jonathan Farina. Everyday Words and the Character of Prose in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2017. Pp. xxii + 286. £75. ISBN 9781107181632 Alighting on the phrase "a curate's egg" to characterize my overall reaction to this book, I decided (in the hope of gaining precision in the use of it) to satisfy a longstanding curiosity about its history, and so went online. What I found there was instructive: the phrase originates in an 1895 George du Maurier cartoon in Punch, which depicts a timid curate at table with a bishop. The latter regrets that the curate seems to have been given a bad egg. Anxious to please, the curate replies "'Oh no, my Lord, I assure you! Parts of it are excellent!'" From this, I learnt that the sense in which I want to use the phrase here (like that in which it is mostly used nowadays) is not that of the original joke. Parts of Farina's book are indeed excellent–unlike the curate's egg–but I found it less than thoroughly satisfactory as a whole. Dickens is a constant presence, as one would expect of a book devoted to "everyday words" in the nineteenth century, but to my mind the best chapter in the book is principally about Jane Austen. It pays attention to a cluster of words in the novels–"attentions," "particular" and "general"–from an epistemological point of view, one that distinguishes Farina's perspective throughout the book. Providing us with a valuable sketch of the progress of pragmatism in the eighteenth century (constituting a worthwhile contribution to the intellectual history of that period in relation to the rise of the novel), Farina offers acute commentary on Jane Austen's fine calibrations of the "particular" and the "general," going beyond Byron's Alexander "Suwarrow, who but saw things in the gross–/ Being much too gross to see them in detail" (Don Juan VII, 77) to achieve a razor edge of balance between these binaries. He convincingly proposes this as one source of her universal appeal as a novelist. Everything is right in this chapter–the choice of relatively unambiguous "everyday words" (at least, through their pairing in opposition), the firm grounding in scholarship, the close reading of the relevant texts. Alas, this [End Page 185] is not everywhere the case. The very first chapter, for instance, entitled "Darwin's View from Todgers's: 'A decided turn' for Character and Common Words," fails to convince. It seeks to establish a connection between the repeated use of the word "turn" in the enumeration of Todgers's lodgers–"a gentleman of a sporting turn," "of a debating turn," or of "a smoking turn," etc.–and Darwin's overtly quite different use of the word in expressions like "may well turn the nicely-balanced scale in the struggle of life," or "let us now turn to the nectar-feeding insects"–and, I believe, fails. Although Farina partly redeems himself at the epistemological level again–the comparison between Darwin and Dickens as classifiers and taxonomists of different species within a genus is apposite, for example–there is much vagueness and imprecision in this chapter. Paying attention to "everyday words" seems at times to imply a rejection of analytic close reading, and, concomitantly, something like tone deafness to Dickensian humor. The comparison he makes between the Todgers bachelors and Odysseus the "man of many turns" can surely only make sense as mock-epic, but he solemnly proclaims that they achieve the same "versatility and variety collectively." Nowhere does he seem to investigate the humorous primary meaning and connotation of Dickens's "turn" here–that these are wannabes who dabble in separate favorite hobby-horses (thoroughly traditional in its descent from Sterne etc.) and are very remote from Darwin in every respect except the purely formal resemblance between collections of species. A much better chapter on Dickens, belonging for the most part amongst the good parts of the egg, concerns the conditional analogy "as if." I have long looked forward to reading an in-depth discussion of this quintessential Dickensian phrase, and...

Binaural localization of musical pitch using interaural time differences in congenital amusia.

Naturally occurring sounds are routinely periodic. The ability to phase-lock to such periodicity facilitates pitch perception and interaural time differences (ITDs) determination in binaural localization. We examined whether deficient pitch processing in individuals with congenital amusia (tone deafness) is accompanied by impaired ability to lateralize musical pitch at auditory periphery and memorize the location of pitch at the working memory level. If common mechanisms subserve processing of temporal-fine-structure based pitch and ITDs, then deficient processing of one feature should impair performance on the other. Thus, we measured ITD discrimination thresholds using an adaptive-tracking procedure for lateralizing musical tone pairs separated by different semitone intervals. Amusic individuals exhibited normal ITD thresholds comparable to those of matched controls, which were not affected by concurrent pitch changes. For working memory tasks, the amusic group performed significantly worse than matched controls in probed pitch recall, irrespective of the complexity level of concurrent variations along the ITD dimension of the melodic sequence. Interestingly, despite normal peripheral ITD thresholds, amusic individuals performed worse than controls in recalling probed locations of tones within a sequence of musical notes originating from different ITD-simulated locations. Findings suggest that individuals with congenital amusia are unimpaired in temporal fine-structure encoding to determine the location of musical pitch based on binaural ITD information at the auditory periphery. However, working memory for a sequence of sounds’ ITD-dependent spatial location is here shown to be impaired and dissociated from the pitch feature of sounds at the working memory level.

Random Feedback Makes Listeners Tone-Deaf

The mental representation of pitch structure (tonal knowledge) is a core component of musical experience and is learned implicitly through exposure to music. One theory of congenital amusia (tone deafness) posits that conscious access to tonal knowledge is disrupted, leading to a severe deficit of music cognition. We tested this idea by providing random performance feedback to neurotypical listeners while they listened to melodies for tonal incongruities and had their electrical brain activity monitored. The introduction of random feedback was associated with a reduction of accuracy and confidence, and a suppression of the late positive brain response usually elicited by conscious detection of a tonal violation. These effects mirror the behavioural and neurophysiological profile of amusia. In contrast, random feedback was associated with an increase in the amplitude of the early right anterior negativity, possibly due to heightened attention to the experimental task. This successful simulation of amusia in a normal brain highlights the key role of feedback in learning, and thereby provides a new avenue for the rehabilitation of learning disorders.

Prevalence of congenital amusia.

Congenital amusia (commonly known as tone deafness) is a lifelong musical disorder that affects 4% of the population according to a single estimate based on a single test from 1980. Here we present the first large-based measure of prevalence with a sample of 20 000 participants, which does not rely on self-referral. On the basis of three objective tests and a questionnaire, we show that (a) the prevalence of congenital amusia is only 1.5%, with slightly more females than males, unlike other developmental disorders where males often predominate; (b) self-disclosure is a reliable index of congenital amusia, which suggests that congenital amusia is hereditary, with 46% first-degree relatives similarly affected; (c) the deficit is not attenuated by musical training and (d) it emerges in relative isolation from other cognitive disorder, except for spatial orientation problems. Hence, we suggest that congenital amusia is likely to result from genetic variations that affect musical abilities specifically.

Tone deafness in developmental prosopagnosia - is there a common cause?

Tone deafness in developmental prosopagnosia - is there a common cause?

Identifying musical difficulties as they relate to congenital amusia in the pediatric population

Introductions/ObjectivesApproximately 4% of the population fails to develop basic music skills and can be identified as “amusic”. Congenital amusia (CA), or “tone deafness”, is thought to be a hereditary disordera predominantly affecting the perception and production of music. The gold standard for diagnosis is the Montreal Battery for Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA). This study aims to pinpoint factors in the history that may help identify amusic children and to determine if amusic pediatric patients can be identified using a widely available, shorter test validated in adults. MethodsSubjects ages 7–17 years were recruited to take an online test, validated against the MBEA, for CA. The sections tested recognition of “off-beat” (OB), “mistuned” (MT), and “out-of-key” (OOK) conditions. Parents filled out a questionnaire regarding the subject's past medical, educational, musical exposure, and family history. ResultsOf 114 subjects recruited, complete data was available on 105 with a mean age of 12.5 years. According to adult criteria, 63/105 (60%) of subjects scored in the “amusic” range. Children >10 years of age scored significantly higher on the off-beat section (p=0.001) and total scores (p=0.025). Subjects who were born prematurely scored significantly lower (p=0.045). Children whose father had difficulties with music scored significantly lower on the off-beat section (p=0.003) and total scores (p=0.008). ConclusionsCA is a disorder that has implications for quality of life. Earlier identification may help elucidate the pathogenesis of the condition and, in the future, the institution of prompt treatment. Further studies are needed to identify the most appropriate and convenient tests, as well as the optimal timing of testing, for reliably diagnosing CA in children.

Adult onset dyschomatosis universalis.

Dear Editor: Dyschromatosis universalis hereditaria (DUH) is a rare hereditary skin disorder that is characterized by a mixture of small and irregularly sized hyperpigmented and hypopigmented macules of a mottled or reticulated pattern. The usual onset age of DUH is 6 years1. The common pattern of inheritance is generally autosomal dominant; however, rarely, a few cases show a sporadic pattern. Some authors named this form as dyschromatosis universalis (DU) instead of DUH2. We report a case of DU in a 29-year-old female patient with no family history and a late onset of the disease. A 29-year-old Korean woman presented with asymptomatic multiple pinhead to rice sized mottled hypopigmented macules with diffuse hyperpigmented patches on the abdomen and left upper arm (Fig. 1A). The hyperpigmented lesions, which had been noted 1 year previously, started initially on the abdomen and gradually spread to the left upper arm. She has no history of systemic disease or any previous cutaneous disease. She also denied any family history of skin discoloration or similar skin lesions. Fig. 1 (A) Multiple pinhead to rice sized mottled hypopigmented macules with diffuse hyperpigmented patches. (B) A closer view. (C) A biopsy specimen taken from a hyperpigmented lesion on the abdomen showed increased abundant melanin pigments in the epidermis ... A biopsy specimen taken from the hyperpigmented lesion on the abdomen showed increased abundant melanin pigments in the epidermis, with normal number and distribution of melanocytes on hematoxylin-eosin, Fontana Masson, and MART-1 stainning (Fig. 1B). In contrast, the histopathologic finding of a hypopigmented macule suggested a reduced amount of melanin pigments in the lesion area (Fig. 1C). On the basis of these findings, the diagnosis was concluded to be DU. We recommended treatment with Q-switched Nd:YAG laser for the hyperpigmented lesions; however, she refused the therapy. She has been followed without any changes. Rycroft et al.3 reported a case with no family history, but was associated with short stature and high tone deafness. In addition, Shono amd Toda4 reported a case with no family history and associated with photosensitivity and a neurosensory hearing defect. Also, Kim et al.2 reported a case that occurred in the patient at age 20 years, with a sporadic pattern and with no comorbid conditions. Some authors suggest that DU is a more appropriate name for the sporadic cases rather than DUH2. DU should be differentiated from other conditions showing both hyperpigmentation and hypopigmentation, such as generalized Dowling-Degos disease, xeroderma pigmentosum, dyskeratosis congenita and chronic radiodermatitis. DU generally does not involve a family history and present only dyschromatosis without systemic disorder. Various therapeutic trials, such as psoralen and ultraviolet A irradiation, thin split-thickness skin autograft, and Q-switched ruby laser have been tried to treat these lesions; however, there is no definitely effective treatment for both hyperpigmented and hypopigmented lesions. Recently, Kim et al.5 reported that they successfully treated the hyperpigmented lesions of DUH with a Q-switched Nd:YAG laser. Only a few cases of DU have been reported worldwide, and we could find only three cases in the Korean literature (Table 1)2,3,4. Particularly, adult-onset DU like our case is very unusual. Thus, we here report a case of DU occurring in a 29-year-old female patient with no family history. Table 1 Reported cases of dyschromatosis universalis in global literatures (including Korea)

The music of the genes

The music of the genes

Impaired learning of event frequencies in tone deafness

Musical knowledge is ubiquitous, effortless, and implicitly acquired all over the world via exposure to musical materials in one's culture. In contrast, one group of individuals who show insensitivity to music, specifically the inability to discriminate pitches and melodies, is the tone-deaf. In this study, we asked whether difficulties in pitch and melody discrimination among the tone-deaf could be related to learning difficulties, and, if so, what processes of learning might be affected in the tone-deaf. We investigated the learning of frequency information in a new musical system in tone-deaf individuals and matched controls. Results showed significantly impaired learning abilities in frequency matching in the tone-deaf. This impairment was positively correlated with the severity of tone deafness as assessed by the Montreal Battery for Evaluation of Amusia. Taken together, the results suggest that tone deafness is characterized by an impaired ability to acquire frequency information from pitched materials in the sound environment.

How Singing Works

Researchers have recently intensified their efforts to investigate the underlying neural correlates of music perception and processing (for an overview see Koelsch, 2011), music production, in comparison, has been studied rather sparsely. The review article by Dalla Bella et al. (2011) on the other hand focuses on the cognitive and neural underpinnings of the human music production system that enables us to sing. Humans, as vocal learners, are not only capable of singing, but the authors point out that “singing is as natural as speaking for the majority of people.” Indeed, the ability of vocal learning, i.e., to imitate our auditory environment can be observed extremely early in human development: Newborns’ cry melody is influenced by the speech prosody of the surrounding spoken language (Mampe et al., 2009). The review by Dalla Bella et al. (2011) defines the term “singing” and importantly categorizes and introduces us to several methods used to investigate singing. First, singing is an umbrella term for many different processes involving pitch production that differ in complexity: Pitch matching or repetition of tone sequences involve working memory to a different degree, whereas singing a well-known song requires the support of long-term memory. Second, there are different techniques to analyze singing, for example (i) the subjective rating of the singing output or (ii) the computing of an objective measurement of accuracy (deviation of produced pitch/interval from the target pitch/interval) and precision (consistency in producing pitch/interval). It is emphasized that different criteria – the type of singing as well as the analysis used – can lead to very different estimates of the ability to sing. Mainly based on functional neuroimaging studies, the authors developed the vocal sensorimotor loop (VSL) model to explain the cognitive and neural processes underlying singing. The model depicts the interplay between memory components, motor and auditory sensory areas, and emphasizes the role of sensorimotor integration for human singing. The process of sensorimotor integration (Hickok et al., 2011) has also been observed during verbal working memory and speech production in humans (Hickok et al., 2003, 2011; Koelsch et al., 2009) as well as for singing in songbirds (Prather et al., 2008; Mooney, 2009). Furthermore, research that investigated the influence of perception on singing is reviewed. Studies do not provide a consistent picture so far, but a dissociation between perception and production is suggested: Whereas poor-pitch singing and perceptual deficits are in general associated in congenital amusia, cases of spared vocal performance and a deficient pitch perception and vice versa cases of intact perception and poor-singing have been reported. In line with the latter results, there are reports indicating that some musicians with absolute (perfect) pitch, a rare ability to name tones, are similarly not able to sing perfectly in tune (for an overview see Takeuchi and Hulse, 1993). An important aspect of the review is the question of how much the neural networks supporting music and language production overlap, especially because research has mainly focused on comparing the perception and processing between language and music (for an overview see Koelsch, 2011). The comparison of the production of language and music indicates so far, that speech production seems to involve a more left-lateralized network, whereas singing seems to rely on a more bilateral network. The authors present preliminary data suggesting that inaccuracy in pitch production does not extend to speech production in tone deafness, indicating that independent mechanisms are subserving imitation in music and language. An intriguing corroborating finding comes from a study investigating members of the KE family. The affected members of this family have an inherited speech–language disorder (verbal and orofacial dyspraxia) caused by a mutation of the FOXP2 gene, but they are not deficient in either the perception or production of pitch (Alcock et al., 2000). To summarize, considering the importance of music for humans (Jancke, 2008, 2009; Koelsch, 2011), the review article by Dalla Bella et al. (2011) contributes to our understanding of human cognition by furthering our knowledge of normal and poor-pitch singing.

Disorders of Pitch Production in Tone Deafness

Singing is as natural as speaking for the majority of people. Yet some individuals (i.e., 10–15%) are poor singers, typically performing or imitating pitches and melodies inaccurately. This condition, commonly referred to as “tone deafness,” has been observed both in the presence and absence of deficient pitch perception. In this article we review the existing literature concerning normal singing, poor-pitch singing, and, briefly, the sources of this condition. Considering that pitch plays a prominent role in the structure of both music and speech we also focus on the possibility that speech production (or imitation) is similarly impaired in poor-pitch singers. Preliminary evidence from our laboratory suggests that pitch imitation may be selectively inaccurate in the music domain without being affected in speech. This finding points to separability of mechanisms subserving pitch production in music and language.

On the Prevalence of Congenital Amusia

CONGENITAL AMUSIA, OR 'TONE DEAFNESS,' IS A LIFELONG impairment in musical ability, reported to be present in approximately 4% of the general population.We examined the meaningfulness of 4% as an estimate of the prevalence of amusia given current test-based methods; here we focused on the Distorted Tunes Test (DTT) and the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA). We demonstrate that estimates of prevalence critically depend on the specific cutoff applied to the test and the degree of skew in the distribution of scores. Broader consideration of this issue reveals that the use of arbitrary cutoffs is not unique to diagnosis of congenital amusia. We conclude that although the MBEA has shown to be a valuable diagnostic tool, caution is warranted against attributing meaning to the reported 4% rate of congenital amusia that is so widely cited in the literature.

Functional MRI Evidence of an Abnormal Neural Network for Pitch Processing in Congenital Amusia

Congenital amusia (tone deafness) is a lifelong disorder that prevents typically developing individuals from acquiring basic musical skills. Electrophysiological evidence indicates that congenital amusia is related to a musical pitch deficit that does not seem to arise from a dysfunction of the auditory cortex but rather from an anomaly along a frontotemporal auditory pathway. In order to better localize the neural basis of this pitch disorder, here we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study. Congenital amusic adults and "musically intact" controls were scanned while passively listening to pure-tone melodic-like sequences in which the pitch distance between consecutive tones was varied parametrically. In both amusics and controls, brain activity increased as a function of increasing pitch distance, even for fine pitch changes, in both the left and right auditory cortices. These results support prior electrophysiological work showing that the auditory cortex of amusic individuals responds normally to pitch. In contrast, the right inferior frontal gyrus showed an abnormal deactivation in the amusic group, as well as reduced connectivity with the auditory cortex as compared with controls. These fMRI data are highly consistent with previous gray and white matter anomalies found in amusics in the auditory and inferior frontal cortices, as well as reduced white matter connections between these 2 regions.