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