PERFECT PITCH
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I came across (well, actually, my wife did) an article about testing of brain activity as to why some people have perfect while the rest of us poor unfortunates have only, at best, relative pitch. This artcle can be seen at the InSCIght web page (plus other related articles) at http://www.apnet.com/inscight/03161998/grapha.htm
Scientists have gained a new clue as to why some people can instantly identify a musical note: When listening to tones, one brain region is more active in these people than in others not so attuned to music, according to a study in the 17 March Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Three years ago, a group led by neurologist Gottfried Schlaug found that musicians with perfect pitch had a larger area called the planum temporale in the left temporal lobe (Science, 3 February 1995, pp. 616 and 699). Looking at brain activity instead of anatomy, a team led by cognitive neuroscientist Robert Zatorre of the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University used positron emission tomography to track cerebral blood flow in 20 musicians in response to musical tones. Ten subjects had absolute pitch (AP), which means they could immediately identify the note being played. In one task, subjects were asked to listen to single tones. The AP group showed "strong activation" in one part of the left frontal cortex, while no heightened activity was seen there in the controls. In contrast, when the researchers asked the subjects to identify two-note intervals in the form of major or minor thirds--something any musician can do--this brain area lit up in both groups. The brain area identified in the tone task had been previously linked to an ability to associate a stimulus with a response; in this case the stimulus is a tone and the response the word for it. The authors suggest that people with perfect pitch may have "the ability to retrieve an arbitrary association between a stimulus and a verbal label." Their findings also add to evidence that musical ability is not confined to the right side of the brain, says Schlaug, now at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital. Absolute pitch in particular, because of the language component, "seems to involve more left than right hemispheric structures," he says. Definitions from the AP Dictionary of Science and Technology.
