Congenital Amusia: A Disorder of Fine-Grained Pitch Discrimination

详细信息    查看全文

• 作者：Isabelle Peretz ; Julie Ayotte ; Robert J. Zatorre ; Jacques Mehler ; Pierre Ahad ; Virginia B. Penhune and Benoî ; t Jutras
• 刊名：Neuron
• 出版年：2002
• 出版时间：17 January 2002
• 年：2002
• 卷：33
• 期：2
• 页码：185-191
• 全文大小：145 K

文摘

We report the first documented case of congenital amusia. This disorder refers to a musical disability that cannot be explained by prior brain lesion, hearing loss, cognitive deficits, socioaffective disturbance, or lack of environmental stimulation. This musical impairment is diagnosed in a middle-aged woman, hereafter referred to as Monica, who lacks most basic musical abilities, including melodic discrimination and recognition, despite normal audiometry and above-average intellectual, memory, and language skills. The results of psychophysical tests show that Monica has severe difficulties with detecting pitch changes. The data suggest that music-processing difficulties may result from problems in fine-grained discrimination of pitch, much in the same way as many language-processing difficulties arise from deficiencies in auditory temporal resolution.