Amusia

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For other meanings of Amusia, see Amusia (disambiguation).

Amusia refers to a number of disorders which impair music processing such as the inability to recognise musical tones or rhythms or to reproduce them. Amusia can be congenital (present at birth) or be acquired sometime later in life (as from brain damage). The term "amusia" is composed of "a-" + "-musia" which means the lack of music.

The inborn defect in tone processing commonly referred to as tone deafness is also referred to as congenital amusia, but acquired amusia may take several forms. Patients with brain damage may experience the loss of ability to produce musical sounds while sparing speech^[1], much like aphasics lose speech selectively but can sometimes still sing ^[2]^[3]. Other forms of amusia may affect specific sub-processes of music processing. Current research has demonstrated dissociations between rhythm, melody and emotional processing of music^[4], and amusia may include impairment of any combination of these skillsets.

[edit] References

^ http://www.brams.umontreal.ca/plab/publications/article/60 I. Peretz; R. Zatorre, Brain organization for music processing., Annual Review of Psychology, vol. 56, pp. 89-114 (2005)
^ http://www.brams.umontreal.ca/plab/publications/articles Hébert, S., Racette, A., Gagnon, L. & Peretz, I. (2003) Revisiting the dissociation between singing and speaking in expressive aphasia. Brain, vol. 126(8), pp. 1838-1850
^ Dorgueille, C. 1966. Introduction à l'étude des amusies. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Université de la Sorbonne, Paris.
^ Sacks, Oliver. (2007). Musicophilia, New York: Random House. pp. 3-17, 187-258, 302-303.