Disorders of pitch production in tone deafness

Abstract

Singing is as natural as speaking for the majority of people. Yet some individuals (i.e., 10-15%) are poor singers, typically performing or imitating pitches and melodies inaccurately. This condition, commonly referred to as "tone deafness," has been observed both in the presence and absence of deficient pitch perception. In this article we review the existing literature concerning normal singing, poor-pitch singing, and, briefly, the sources of this condition. Considering that pitch plays a prominent role in the structure of both music and speech we also focus on the possibility that speech production (or imitation) is similarly impaired in poor-pitch singers. Preliminary evidence from our laboratory suggests that pitch imitation may be selectively inaccurate in the music domain without being affected in speech. This finding points to separability of mechanisms subserving pitch production in music and language.

Keywords: cognitive neuroscience; congenital amusia; music cognition; pitch production; poor-pitch singing; speech production; tone deafness; vocal performance.

Figure 1

Schema of the vocal sensorimotor loop (VSL; see also Berkowska and Dalla Bella, 2009b). The brain regions likely associated with the functional components of the VSL are indicated in gray. SMA, supplementary motor area; ACC, anterior cingulate cortex; dPFC, dorsal prefrontal cortex; SPT, cortex of the dorsal Sylvian fissure at the parietal–temporal junction.

Figure 2

Imitation of pitch intervals by a poor-pitch singer (AZ) and three matched control participants, (A) in spoken utterances and (B) in a musical context (i.e., singing). Accuracy in terms of relative pitch (pitch interval deviation) is reported.

Figure 3

Imitation of pitch intervals by a poor-pitch singer (AZ) and three matched control participants, (A) in spoken utterances and (B) in a musical context (i.e., singing). Accuracy in terms of absolute pitch (transposition error) is reported.