Abstract
Absolute pitch (AP) has been shown to be associated with morphological
changes and neurophysiological adaptations in the planum temporale,
a cortical area involved in higher-order auditory and speech perception
processes. The direct link between speech processing and AP has hitherto
not been addressed. We provide first evidence that AP compared with
relative pitch (RP) ability is associated with significantly different
hemodynamic responses to complex speech sounds. By systematically
varying the lexical and/or prosodic information of speech stimuli,
we demonstrated consistent activation differences in AP musicians
compared with RP musicians and nonmusicians. These differences relate
to stronger activations in the posterior part of the middle temporal
gyrus and weaker activations in the anterior mid-part of the superior
temporal gyrus. Furthermore, this pattern is considerably modulated
by the auditory acuity of AP. Our results suggest that the neural
underpinnings of pitch processing expertise exercise a strong influence
on propositional speech perception (sentence meaning).
- (psychology),recognition
- (psychology):
- acoustic
- adult
- anatomy
- cortex,auditory
- cortex:
- histology,auditory
- histology,nerve
- histology,temporal
- imaging,male,music,nerve
- laterality,functional
- laterality:
- lobe,temporal
- lobe:
- mapping,cerebral,cerebral:
- net,nerve
- net:
- pathways,auditory
- pathways:
- perception,pitch
- perception,speech
- perception:
- physiology,auditory
- physiology,brain
- physiology,computer-assisted,dominance,female,functional
- physiology,humans,image
- physiology,magnetic
- physiology,neuropsychological
- physiology,recognition
- physiology,semantics,speech
- physiology,temporal
- physiology,young
- processing,language
- resonance
- stimulation,adult,auditory
- tests,learning,learning:
- tests,pitch
- \&
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