Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, CNRS Paris, France ; Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité Paris, France.
Department of Psychiatry, Institute of Mental Health, University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Front Syst Neurosci. 2013 Dec 3;7:102. doi: 10.3389/fnsys.2013.00102. eCollection 2013.
Absolute pitch, the ability to identify or produce the pitch of a sound without a reference point, has a critical period, i.e., it can only be acquired early in life. However, research has shown that histone-deacetylase inhibitors (HDAC inhibitors) enable adult mice to establish perceptual preferences that are otherwise impossible to acquire after youth. In humans, we found that adult men who took valproate (VPA) (a HDAC inhibitor) learned to identify pitch significantly better than those taking placebo-evidence that VPA facilitated critical-period learning in the adult human brain. Importantly, this result was not due to a general change in cognitive function, but rather a specific effect on a sensory task associated with a critical-period.
绝对音高，即无需参照点就能辨别或发出声音音高的能力，具有关键期，也就是说，它只能在生命早期获得。然而，研究表明组蛋白去乙酰化酶抑制剂（HDAC 抑制剂）能使成年老鼠建立起在青春后期原本不可能获得的感知偏好。在人类中，我们发现服用丙戊酸钠（VPA）（一种 HDAC 抑制剂）的成年男性在识别音高方面的表现明显优于服用安慰剂的男性——这表明 VPA 促进了成年人大脑的关键期学习。重要的是，这一结果并非源于认知功能的普遍变化，而是源于与关键期相关的特定感官任务的特定影响。
