The International Laboratory for Brain Music and Sound Research (BRAMS), Department of Psychology, University of Montreal, Montreal, Québec, Canada.
PLoS One. 2012;7(5):e36860. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0036860. Epub 2012 May 11.
Congenital amusia is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects about 3% of the adult population. Adults experiencing this musical disorder in the absence of macroscopically visible brain injury are described as cases of congenital amusia under the assumption that the musical deficits have been present from birth. Here, we show that this disorder can be expressed in the developing brain. We found that (10-13 year-old) children exhibit a marked deficit in the detection of fine-grained pitch differences in both musical and acoustical context in comparison to their normally developing peers comparable in age and general intelligence. This behavioral deficit could be traced down to their abnormal P300 brain responses to the detection of subtle pitch changes. The altered pattern of electrical activity does not seem to arise from an anomalous functioning of the auditory cortex, because all early components of the brain potentials, the N100, the MMN, and the P200 appear normal. Rather, the brain and behavioral measures point to disrupted information propagation from the auditory cortex to other cortical regions. Furthermore, the behavioral and neural manifestations of the disorder remained unchanged after 4 weeks of daily musical listening. These results show that congenital amusia can be detected in childhood despite regular musical exposure and normal intellectual functioning.
先天性失乐症是一种神经发育障碍，影响约 3%的成年人口。在没有明显可见的大脑损伤的情况下，患有这种音乐障碍的成年人被描述为先天性失乐症病例，假设音乐缺陷从出生就存在。在这里，我们表明这种障碍可以在发育中的大脑中表达。我们发现，与年龄和一般智力相当的正常发育的同龄人相比，（10-13 岁）儿童在音乐和声学环境中对细微音高差异的检测存在明显缺陷。这种行为缺陷可以追溯到他们对细微音高变化检测的异常 P300 脑反应。电活动的改变模式似乎不是由于听觉皮层的异常功能引起的，因为大脑电位的所有早期成分，即 N100、MMN 和 P200 都正常。相反，大脑和行为测量结果表明，从听觉皮层到其他皮层区域的信息传递受到干扰。此外，在进行为期 4 周的日常音乐聆听后，该障碍的行为和神经表现保持不变。这些结果表明，尽管有规律的音乐接触和正常的智力功能，先天性失乐症仍可在儿童期检测到。
