Brain's Pitch Center Disovered
John Sales
Johns Hopkins Medicine
__________________
Johns Hopkins Gazette
Maryland (US):
Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered a discrete region of the monkey brain that processes pitch, the relative high and low points of sound, by recognizing a single musical note played by different instruments.Given the similarities between monkeys and man, humans may have a similar pitch-processing region in the brain, too, which might one day help those with hearing and speech problems.
The paper appeared in the Aug. 25 issue of Nature.By recording the activity of individual brain cells as monkeys listened to musical notes, the scientists identified single neurons, located in what they've called the brain's "pitch center," that recognize a middle-C as a middle-C even when played by two different instruments."Pitch perception is such a basic function of human and animal auditory systems, yet its source has remained elusive to researchers for decades," said Xiaoqin Wang, associate professor of biomedical engineering and neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences. "The discovery of a pitch-processing area in the brain solves an age-old mystery of auditory research."
According to Wang, pitch's importance to humans is found in facilitating our ability to follow a sequence of sounds we would recognize as "melodic" and combinations of sounds we identify as harmony.
As a result, pitch gives meaning to the patterns, tones and emotional content of speech, like how raising our voice at the end of a sentence indicates a question, and cues the listener to the speaker's gender and age.
Nov 08, 2005
John Sales
Johns Hopkins Medicine
__________________
Johns Hopkins Gazette
Maryland (US):
Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered a discrete region of the monkey brain that processes pitch, the relative high and low points of sound, by recognizing a single musical note played by different instruments.Given the similarities between monkeys and man, humans may have a similar pitch-processing region in the brain, too, which might one day help those with hearing and speech problems.
The paper appeared in the Aug. 25 issue of Nature.By recording the activity of individual brain cells as monkeys listened to musical notes, the scientists identified single neurons, located in what they've called the brain's "pitch center," that recognize a middle-C as a middle-C even when played by two different instruments."Pitch perception is such a basic function of human and animal auditory systems, yet its source has remained elusive to researchers for decades," said Xiaoqin Wang, associate professor of biomedical engineering and neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences. "The discovery of a pitch-processing area in the brain solves an age-old mystery of auditory research."
According to Wang, pitch's importance to humans is found in facilitating our ability to follow a sequence of sounds we would recognize as "melodic" and combinations of sounds we identify as harmony.
As a result, pitch gives meaning to the patterns, tones and emotional content of speech, like how raising our voice at the end of a sentence indicates a question, and cues the listener to the speaker's gender and age.
Nov 08, 2005
