Valproate reopens critical-period learning of absolute pitch

http://www.frontiersin.org/Systems_Neuroscience/10.3389/fnsys.2013.00102/full

by thelogos • 13 years ago

71 14 13 years ago

The paper says that absolute pitch, the ability to name a tone without hearing other reference tones (i.e. that note is a C#), is typically found in musicians who began training young (below six). This drug seems to reopen that window and let adult brains learn the skill.

Only 24 people in the study though, and just 18 completed it. The hypothesis seems a little optimistic, and given the sample size, I'd say more data needed.

"Given the difficulty of improving AP performance in adulthood, we hypothesize that in our task, even a small advantage in pitch class identification in the VPA as compared to the placebo group is suggestive..."

scarecrowbob• 13 years ago

Given that I just spent a good chunk of the evening dissatisfied with my ability to play double bass with superior intonation, I'd really like to see more data on these claims. It would be super useful if the study's initial claims were born out in larger studies, though I am not super eager to start experimenting on myself.

jboggan• 13 years ago

This is really fascinating, I'd love to see this on a larger scale.

I was exposed to music very early but I never began to learn an instrument until I was 12. It was, however, the bassoon, which being rather unstable in intonation leads a malleable young ear to have a bit more pitch sensitivity than one raised on more settled instruments. In high school years I'd practice "absolute pitch" in a darkened practice room with a piano. I'm not sure which battery of tests the researchers are talking about but I'd be interested in taking them. The 1 in 10000 figure is especially striking to me - having grown up around musicians I never thought about how rare it would be amongst the general population, but considering how few musicians I knew would claim to possess it I suppose that does make sense.

I don't know if I really possess "Absolute Pitch" - I may just have really excellent relative pitch and know one or two reference notes for certain. When I had people test me in high school I usually just listened to the tone versus the "C" in my head and guessed relative to that interval.

Playing music with some musicians drives me crazy because they transpose anything and everything. What key is that song in? Who cares, it's I-IV-V . . . that hurts me. A friend played me a rough demo of a song in person in E, emailed me a recording she made in F, and played it in rehearsal the next day in F#. Just thinking about it makes my skin crawl. I can transpose songs and sing and play in different keys than the first time I heard it, IT JUST HURTS MY BRAIN.

I also hear songs everywhere. That trumpet note held on the jazz recording you are listening to? That's the same guitar note that starts this other song, and now I'm stuck hearing it in my head. What, that doorbell doesn't remind you of the beginning of a Haydn symphony? Well now I know what's playing in my head for the next hour.

The most interesting thing about my pitch sense is that I always find myself riding a motorcycle on the highway at 6600 RPM regardless of what speed I actually want to go. I just gravitate there without thinking about it. Even though my bike is much smoother and stronger at 7000+, I always find myself back at 6600. The unconscious reason? 6600 RPM * 2 cylinders = 220 Hz, or exactly an octave below the concert "A" that orchestras tune to. I've never ridden a triple but if I did I'm pretty sure I'd get stuck at 4400 or 8800 RPM for exactly the same reason. I hate being off-key when I'm riding.

jbkkd• 13 years ago

I have the exact same problems when playing with others, or hearing a song in a concert which has been transposed. I freak out when someone thinks he's just about right with the key, but is way off chart.

I also recognise notes in relative to C though, so it might just be really good relative pitch

derefr• 13 years ago

I also hear songs everywhere. That trumpet note held on the jazz recording you are listening to? That's the same guitar note that starts this other song, and now I'm stuck hearing it in my head. What, that doorbell doesn't remind you of the beginning of a Haydn symphony? Well now I know what's playing in my head for the next hour.

Interesting. I've had no musical training, but I end up noticing "matches" like these constantly. Is there a way to test one's pitch sensitivity?

bjornsing• 13 years ago

I can transpose songs and sing and play in different keys than the first time I heard it, IT JUST HURTS MY BRAIN.

Maybe Valproate would help? ;)

tunesmith• 13 years ago

Absolute pitch is often an obstacle in ear training. Speaking as someone who got the highest grade in a few college-level ear-training courses in music degree programs, the students with perfect pitch had a lot of problems that I didn't. Transposition in particular gave them problems. A really strong sense of relative pitch is much more valuable, especially for areas like jazz theory.

Udo• 13 years ago

This is really interesting in that it suggests there may be a tradeoff between being good at two advantageous but somewhat mutually exclusive capabilities. On the one hand "perfect" pitch allows people to recognize sounds precisely, but relative pitchers are better pattern recognizers.

This ties in to my anecdotal observation that a lot of these early and seriously instrument-playing kids seemed really bad at judging general musical aesthetics and improvisation, but at the same time really perfect at straight reproduction. By the same token, musically creative people seemed to experiment a lot, often doing a bunch of really interesting improvisations without giving it much thought.

One of my music teachers was this way, it really was something else listening to him just idly talking and playing around on the piano for entire lesson. On the other hand, he was really bad at identifying individual notes but he could re-play a melody that he heard just once without any problems, immediately going off on several tangents and experimenting on it in different keys.

On a personal note, that was the point where I recognized that I was in neither of these categories. I switched my art class to painting after a while and stayed there ;)

route66• 13 years ago

Next to that, performers of early music of non-western music experience no advantage from pp. Tunings are relative to other central tones, or tuning does not happen in tempered system currently in use.

Cass• 13 years ago

If this drug improves your ability to perceive subtle differences in sound the way children can, I wonder if this could also facilitate learning a language with native-speaker pronunciation? As a German who still can't quite get the "th" sound right after a decade of speaking English fluently and is currently struggling badly with the Arabic غ, I'd find that rather more useful that absolute pitch.

vincvinc• 13 years ago

This is what I was thinking. I would totally get treatment to 're-open' my critical period and get cracking on some tonal languages!!

evmar• 13 years ago

Arabic غ is pretty similar to German's "r", isn't it? As a native English speaker who's studied both German and Arabic, I at least produce my mangled version of both in the same way...

gtani• 13 years ago

This reminds me of a few questions I have. Some people claim that perfect or absolute pitch gains the ability to instantly recognize harmonic structures, other people say it's a hindrance to anybody that needs to transpose, or, say, play on an old piano tuned to 432, or listen to pressings of Kind of Blue that're played back sharp. And I've never seen a discussion of PP/AP vs the ability that string and wind players have to play to just intonation (vs. e.g. a piano's equal temperament with octave stretches)

The posts in /r/musictheory are interesting, the one about perfect/absolute pitch being located in the same part of the brain responsible for language recognition, and possibly synesthesia

http://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/12j97f/can_abso...

And here trained musicians argue about instant chord recognition and "party trick"-ness. Maybe PP is like "programming language expressiveness" on HN, everybody is certain they know exactly what it means.

http://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/12k6ep/the_trut...

dekhn• 13 years ago

The best debugging I had ever had was an unexpected comment from a person in the room when I proudly announced that I had written machine language code to generate 440Hz.

He said, "nope, that's 435 or 436."

I had a bug- an extra delay I wasn't counting for.

Valproate reopens critical-period learning of absolute pitch

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