Search results for "Amusia"
showing 10 items of 12 documents
Amusic does not mean unmusical: Beat perception and synchronization ability despite pitch deafness
2013
Pitch deafness, the most commonly known form of congenital amusia, refers to a severe deficit in musical pitch processing (i.e., melody discrimination and recognition) that can leave time processing--including rhythm, metre, and "feeling the beat"--preserved. In Experiment 1, we show that by presenting musical excerpts in nonpitched drum timbres, rather than pitched piano tones, amusics show normal metre recognition. Experiment 2 reveals that body movement influences amusics' interpretation of the beat of an ambiguous drum rhythm. Experiment 3 and a subsequent exploratory study show an ability to synchronize movement to the beat of popular dance music and potential for improvement when give…
Musical familiarity in congenital amusia: Evidence from a gating paradigm
2013
Congenital amusia has been described as a lifelong deficit of music perception and production, notably including amusic individuals' difficulties to recognize a familiar tune without the aid of lyrics. The present study aimed to evaluate whether amusic individuals might have acquired long-term knowledge of familiar music, and to test for the minimal amount of acoustic information necessary to access this knowledge (if any) in amusia. Segments of familiar and unfamiliar instrumental musical pieces were presented with increasing duration (250, 500, 1000 msec etc.), and participants provided familiarity judgments for each segment. Results showed that amusic individuals succeeded in differentia…
Music perception and cognition: development, neural basis, and rehabilitative use of music.
2013
Music is a highly versatile form of art and communication that has been an essential part of human society since its early days. Neuroimaging studies indicate that music is a powerful stimulus also for the human brain, engaging not just the auditory cortex but also a vast, bilateral network of temporal, frontal, parietal, cerebellar, and limbic brain areas that govern auditory perception, syntactic and semantic processing, attention and memory, emotion and mood control, and motor skills. Studies of amusia, a severe form of musical impairment, highlight the right temporal and frontal cortices as the core neural substrates for adequate perception and production of music. Many of the basic aud…
Born to dance but beat deaf: A new form of congenital amusia
2011
Humans move to the beat of music. Despite the ubiquity and early emergence of this response, some individuals report being unable to feel the beat in music. We report a sample of people without special training, all of whom were proficient at perceiving and producing the musical beat with the exception of one case (“Mathieu”). Motion capture and psychophysical tests revealed that people synchronized full-body motion to music and detected when a model dancer was not in time with the music. In contrast, Mathieu failed to period- and phase-lock his movement to the beat of most music pieces, and failed to detect most asynchronies of the model dancer. Mathieu’s near-normal synchronization with a…
Discrimination of tonal and atonal music in congenital amusia: The advantage of implicit tasks
2016
International audience; Congenital amusia is a neurodevelopmental disorder of music perception and production, which has been attributed to a major deficit in pitch processing. While most studies and diagnosis tests have used explicit investigation methods, recent studies using implicit investigation approaches have revealed some unimpaired pitch structure processing in congenital amusia. The present study investigated amusic individuals' processing of tonal structures (e.g., musical structures respecting the Western tonal system) via three different questions. Amusic participants and their matched controls judged tonal versions (original musical excerpts) and atonal versions (with manipula…
Amusia and Cognitive Deficits after Stroke
2009
We studied the relationship between musical and cognitive deficits by testing middle cerebral arterial (MCA) stroke patients (n= 53) with a shortened version of the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA) and an extensive neuropsychological test battery. Results showed that amusic patients (n= 32) had more severe cognitive deficits, especially in working memory and executive functioning, than did non-amusic patients (n= 21), and the severity of amusia also correlated with attention deficits. These findings thus suggest that domain-general attention, executive, and working memory processes are associated with amusia after stroke.
Cognitive deficits associated with acquired amusia after stroke: A neuropsychological follow-up study
2009
Recent evidence on amusia suggests that our ability to perceive music might be based on the same neural resources that underlie other higher cognitive functions, such as speech perception and spatial processing. We studied the neural correlates of acquired amusia by performing extensive neuropsychological assessments on 53 stroke patients with a left or right hemisphere middle cerebral artery (MCA) stroke 1 week, 3 months, and 6 months after the stroke. In addition, structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was performed on all patients 1 week and 6 months post-stroke. Based on their performance on a shortened version of the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA), the patients we…
Priming paradigm reveals harmonic structure processing in congenital amusia.
2012
Abstract Deficits for pitch structure processing in congenital amusia has been mostly reported for melodic stimuli and explicit judgments. The present study investigated congenital amusia with harmonic stimuli and a priming task. Amusic and control participants performed a speeded phoneme discrimination task on sung chord sequences. The target phoneme was sung either on a functionally important chord (tonic chord, referred to as “related target”) or a less important one (subdominant chord, referred to as “less-related target”). Correct response times were faster when the target phoneme was sung on tonic chords rather than on subdominant chords, and this effect was less pronounced, albeit si…
Music for the Brain Across Life
2013
Music is highly a versatile and multifaceted form of art and communication that has been an essential part of human societies since their early days. During the past 20 years, neuroimaging studies have shown that music is a powerful stimulant also for the brain, engaging not just the auditory cortex but also a vast network of temporal, frontal, parietal, cerebellar, and limbic brain areas that govern auditory perception, syntactic and semantic processing, attention and memory, emotion and mood control, and motor skills. Especially regions in the right temporal and frontal cortices are needed for the accurate perception and production of music as abnormal neural development or acquired damag…
Auditory and Cognitive Deficits Associated with Acquired Amusia after Stroke: A Magnetoencephalography and Neuropsychological Follow-Up Study
2010
Acquired amusia is a common disorder after damage to the middle cerebral artery (MCA) territory. However, its neurocognitive mechanisms, especially the relative contribution of perceptual and cognitive factors, are still unclear. We studied cognitive and auditory processing in the amusic brain by performing neuropsychological testing as well as magnetoencephalography (MEG) measurements of frequency and duration discrimination using magnetic mismatch negativity (MMNm) recordings. Fifty-three patients with a left (n = 24) or right (n = 29) hemisphere MCA stroke (MRI verified) were investigated 1 week, 3 months, and 6 months after the stroke. Amusia was evaluated using the Montreal Battery of …