Congenital amusia: a disorder of fine-grained pitch discrimination.
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.
Peretz
Isabelle
I
Department of Psychology, University of Montreal, C.P. 6128 succursale Centre-ville, Montreal, Quebec H3C 3J7, Canada. isabelle.peretz@umontreal.ca
Ayotte
Julie
J
Zatorre
Robert J
RJ
Mehler
Jacques
J
Ahad
Pierre
P
Penhune
Virginia B
VB
Jutras
Benoît
B
D000328:Adult; D001308:Auditory Perceptual Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D009146:Music; D010897:Pitch Discrimination; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013067:Speech Perception