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Amusia
Amusia is a musical disorder that appears mainly as a defect in processing pitch but also encompasses musical memory and recognition. Two main classifications of amusia exist: acquired amusia, which occurs as a result of brain damage, and congenital amusia, which results from a music-processing anomaly present since birth.
Studies have shown that congenital amusia is a deficit in fine-grained pitch discrimination. Early estimates suggested that 4% of the population has this disorder. More recent direct counts based on a sample of 20,000 people indicate a true rate closer to 1.5%. Acquired amusia may take several forms. Patients with brain damage may experience the loss of ability to produce musical sounds while sparing speech, much like aphasics lose speech selectively but can sometimes still sing. Other forms of amusia may affect specific sub-processes of music processing. Current research has demonstrated dissociations between rhythm, melody, and emotional processing of music. Amusia may include impairment of any combination of these skill sets.
Symptoms of amusia are generally categorized as receptive, clinical, or mixed. Symptoms of receptive amusia, sometimes referred to as "musical deafness" or "tone deafness", include the inability to recognize familiar melodies, the loss of ability to read musical notation, and the inability to detect wrong or out-of tune notes. Clinical, or expressive, symptoms include the loss of ability to sing, write musical notation, and/or play an instrument. A mixed disorder is a combination of expressive and receptive impairment.
Clinical symptoms of acquired amusia are much more variable than those of congenital amusia and are determined by the location and nature of the lesion. Brain injuries may affect motor or expressive functioning, including the ability to sing, whistle, or hum a tune (oral-expressive amusia), the ability to play an instrument (instrumental amusia or musical apraxia), and the ability to write music (musical agraphia). Additionally, brain damage to the receptive dimension affects the faculty to discriminate tunes (receptive or sensorial amusia), the ability to read music (musical alessia), and the ability to identify songs that were familiar prior to the brain damage (amnesic amusia).
Those with congenital amusia show impaired performance on discrimination, identification and imitation of sentences with intonational differences in pitch direction in their final word. This suggests that amusia can in subtle ways impair language processing.
Amusic individuals have a remarkable sparing of emotional responses to music in the context of severe and lifelong deficits in processing music. Some individuals with amusia describe music as unpleasant. Others simply refer to it as noise and find it annoying.[citation needed] This can have social implications because amusics often try to avoid music, which in many social situations is not an option.
In China and other countries where tonal languages are spoken, amusia may have the more pronounced social and emotional impact of experiencing difficulty in speaking and understanding the language. However, context clues are often strong enough to determine the correct meaning, similarly to how homophones can be understood.
Amusia has been classified as a learning disability that affects musical abilities. Research suggests that in congenital amusia, younger subjects can be taught tone differentiation techniques. This finding leads researchers to believe that amusia is related to dyslexia and other similar disorders. Research has been shown that amusia may be related to an increase in size of the cerebral cortex, which may be a result of a malformation in cortical development. Conditions such as dyslexia and epilepsy are due to a malformation in cortical development and also lead to an increase in cortical thickness, which leads researchers to believe that congenital amusia may be caused by the identical phenomenon in a different area of the brain.
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Amusia
Amusia is a musical disorder that appears mainly as a defect in processing pitch but also encompasses musical memory and recognition. Two main classifications of amusia exist: acquired amusia, which occurs as a result of brain damage, and congenital amusia, which results from a music-processing anomaly present since birth.
Studies have shown that congenital amusia is a deficit in fine-grained pitch discrimination. Early estimates suggested that 4% of the population has this disorder. More recent direct counts based on a sample of 20,000 people indicate a true rate closer to 1.5%. Acquired amusia may take several forms. Patients with brain damage may experience the loss of ability to produce musical sounds while sparing speech, much like aphasics lose speech selectively but can sometimes still sing. Other forms of amusia may affect specific sub-processes of music processing. Current research has demonstrated dissociations between rhythm, melody, and emotional processing of music. Amusia may include impairment of any combination of these skill sets.
Symptoms of amusia are generally categorized as receptive, clinical, or mixed. Symptoms of receptive amusia, sometimes referred to as "musical deafness" or "tone deafness", include the inability to recognize familiar melodies, the loss of ability to read musical notation, and the inability to detect wrong or out-of tune notes. Clinical, or expressive, symptoms include the loss of ability to sing, write musical notation, and/or play an instrument. A mixed disorder is a combination of expressive and receptive impairment.
Clinical symptoms of acquired amusia are much more variable than those of congenital amusia and are determined by the location and nature of the lesion. Brain injuries may affect motor or expressive functioning, including the ability to sing, whistle, or hum a tune (oral-expressive amusia), the ability to play an instrument (instrumental amusia or musical apraxia), and the ability to write music (musical agraphia). Additionally, brain damage to the receptive dimension affects the faculty to discriminate tunes (receptive or sensorial amusia), the ability to read music (musical alessia), and the ability to identify songs that were familiar prior to the brain damage (amnesic amusia).
Those with congenital amusia show impaired performance on discrimination, identification and imitation of sentences with intonational differences in pitch direction in their final word. This suggests that amusia can in subtle ways impair language processing.
Amusic individuals have a remarkable sparing of emotional responses to music in the context of severe and lifelong deficits in processing music. Some individuals with amusia describe music as unpleasant. Others simply refer to it as noise and find it annoying.[citation needed] This can have social implications because amusics often try to avoid music, which in many social situations is not an option.
In China and other countries where tonal languages are spoken, amusia may have the more pronounced social and emotional impact of experiencing difficulty in speaking and understanding the language. However, context clues are often strong enough to determine the correct meaning, similarly to how homophones can be understood.
Amusia has been classified as a learning disability that affects musical abilities. Research suggests that in congenital amusia, younger subjects can be taught tone differentiation techniques. This finding leads researchers to believe that amusia is related to dyslexia and other similar disorders. Research has been shown that amusia may be related to an increase in size of the cerebral cortex, which may be a result of a malformation in cortical development. Conditions such as dyslexia and epilepsy are due to a malformation in cortical development and also lead to an increase in cortical thickness, which leads researchers to believe that congenital amusia may be caused by the identical phenomenon in a different area of the brain.