Tone deafness

Tone deafness is the lack of relative pitch, or the inability to discriminate between musical notes. Being tone deaf is the difficulty or being unable to correctly hear relative differences between notes that is not due to the lack of musical training or education. Tone deafness is also known variously as amusia, tune deafness, dysmelodia and dysmusia.

Description

The ability of relative pitch, as with other musical abilities, is inherent in healthy functional humans. The hearing impairment appears to be genetically influenced, though it can also result from brain damage. While someone who is unable to reproduce pitches because of a lack of musical training would not be considered tone deaf in a medical sense, the term might still be used to describe them casually. Someone who cannot reproduce pitches accurately, because of lack of training or tone deafness, is said to be unable to "carry a tune." Tone deafness affects ability to hear pitch changes produced by a musical instrument.

However, tone deaf people seem to be only disabled when it comes to music, and they can fully interpret the prosody or intonation of human speech. Tone deafness has a strong negative correlation with belonging to societies with tonal languages. This could be evidence that the ability to reproduce and distinguish between notes may be a learned skill, but may conversely suggest that the genetic predisposition towards accurate pitch discrimination may influence the linguistic development of a population towards tonality. A correlation between allele frequencies and linguistic typological features has been recently discovered, supporting the latter hypothesis.^[1]

Tone deafness is also associated with other musical-specific impairments such as inability to keep time with music (the lack of rhythm), or the inability to remember or even recognize a song. These disabilities can appear separately but some research shows that they are more likely to appear in tone deaf people.^[2]

Experienced musicians such as W. A. Mathieu have addressed tone deafness in adults as correctable with training.^[3]

Neurology

In 9 of 10 tone deaf people the superior arcuate fasciculus in the right hemisphere could not be detected suggesting a disconnection between the posterior superior temporal gyrus and the posterior inferior frontal gyrus. Researchers suggested the posterior superior temporal gyrus was the origin of the disorder.^[4]

See also

• Amusia, the medical loss of musical ability
• Absolute pitch, the rare ability to name a musical note when played or sung
• Relative pitch, the normal human ability to accurately discriminate pitch intervals
• Deafness, the inability to hear sound
• Synesthesia
• Color blindness

Notable tone-deaf people

• Charles Darwin^[5]
• Ulysses S. Grant^[6]
• Florence Foster Jenkins^[7]
• Alfonso XIII of Spain^[8]
• Isabel Paterson^[9]
• William Lawrence Bragg^[10]
• J. B. S. Haldane^[11]
• Che Guevara^[12]
• W. D. Hamilton^[13]
• John Dewey^[14]

References

External links

• University of Newcastle: Musical Listening Test
• BBC: Listening Displeasure
• NPR: Test for tone deafness (requires RealAudio player)
• MedicineNet: Amusia
• NIH: Distorted Tunes Test
• The Listening Book: Tone-Deaf Choir audio description by W. A. Mathieu