MadSci Network: Neuroscience
Query:

Re: when you sing off-key, do you hear off-key?

Date: Wed May 3 14:02:33 2000
Posted By: Eric Tardif, Post-doc/Fellow, Institut de Physiologie, Université de Lausanne
Area of science: Neuroscience
ID: 952117451.Ns
Message:

Dear Melanie,

First, I think you should ask your friend if she actually knows about the way she sings and if she is able to detect when someone sings off-key. That would partially answer your question. What I can say is that hearing a song, remembering it and reproducing it utilises very complex neural processing mechanisms that are not well understood. Nonetheless, anatomical and physiological studies have lead to several hypothesis.

Let's take a look at the putative neuronal steps by which the capacity to replicate a song can be achieved. When you hear a song for the first time, it is analysed by auditory parts of the brain located in the temporal lobes and then this information is likely to be transferred to other brain regions where it can be stored. These and other regions of the brain may also have a role in emotional content of music. When you hear the song again, it can be compared with memory traces you have which makes you recognize the song. If you wish to reproduce the song, stored information about this song must reach other brain regions located in the frontal lobes that generate the vocalisation. Since this is a very complex process, information can be somewhat distorted at different levels, which may yield off-key singing.

One other way to improve our understanding about this is to look at people with brain lesions. In some cases, the lesion produces amusia, a deficit in which the patient can no longer appreciate music. Usually, these patients have problems in both appreciating the music they hear as well as in producing music by themseves (see Peretz et al. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology. 51(4) :354-68, 1997). In a case study reported by a Japanese group (Takeda K. et al. Rinsho Shinkeigaku - Clinical Neurology. 30(1) :78-83, 1990) the patient was a music teacher who, after brain damage, experienced serious difficulties in singing her songs. Interestingly, she was able to point out her errors while singing. This shows that despite her lesion, she could actually hear that she was singing off-key. Finally, some authors make a distinction between receptive and executive amusia which may be correlated with lesions in different areas of the brain. Apparently, receptive amusia is more likely to occur with temporal lesions whereas executive amusia is associated with frontal lesions (Berman IW South African Medical Journal. 59(3) :78-81, 1981).

In conclusion, my personal feeling about your friend is that she’s probably able to notice when someone really sings off-key since it is a relatively easy task for people with our cultural background. However, to reproduce accurately a song is a much more difficult task. In addition, to point out our own errors while singing is not that easy since we must deal with a double task : singing and recognizing errors at the same time.

For more information about musical processing, visit these sites:

Best regards,
Eric


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