Congenital amusics use a secondary pitch mechanism to identify lexical tones

Publication date: Available online 4 August 2017 Source:Neuropsychologia Author(s): Oliver Bones, Patrick C.M. Wong Amusia is a pitch perception disorder associated with deficits in processing and production of both musical and lexical tones, which previous reports have suggested may be constrained to fine-grained pitch judgements. In the present study speakers of tone-languages, in which lexical tones are used to convey meaning, identified words present in chimera stimuli containing conflicting pitch-cues in the temporal fine-structure and temporal envelope, and which therefore conveyed two distinct utterances. Amusics were found to be more likely than controls to judge the word according to the envelope pitch-cues. This demonstrates that amusia is not associated with fine-grained pitch judgements alone, and is consistent with there being two distinct pitch mechanisms and with amusics having an atypical reliance on a secondary mechanism based upon envelope cues.

Source: Neuropsychologia - August 7, 2017 Category: Neurology Source Type: research