Music-specific disorders

The reason for this increased interest in music is because it "provides a tool to study numerous aspects of neuroscience, from motor skill learning to emotion".

Scientists have studied patients with brain lesions in their right temporal auditory cortex and realized that they were unable to "tap a beat or generate a steady pulse".

Music unfolds over time, and therefore the "auditory cognitive system must depend to a large degree on mechanisms that allow a stimulus to be maintained on-line to be able to relate one element in a sequence to another that occurs later" (Peretz 2005).

Research has shown that working memory mechanisms for pitch information over a short period of time may be different from those involved in speech.

The mode of music (major or minor), and the tempo of a song (fast or slow) can invoke joy or sorrow in the listener.

[6] In the brain, emotional analysis is carried out by "a common cortical relay, suggesting no direct access to subcortical, limbic structures".

The first documented case of congenital amusia was reported in 2002 by music neuroscientists from the Department of Psychology at the University of Montreal, Canada.

[9] Some of the techniques that are used in studying this disorder are functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), positron emission tomography or PET scans, and anatomical MRI.

Symptoms of this disease vary from lack of basic melodic discrimination, recognition despite normal audiometry, above average intellectual, memory, as well as language skills (Peretz 2002).

Although imagined sounds can be non-musical; such as bells, whistles and sirens, case studies indicate that music "[takes] precedence over all other auditory hallucinations" (Sacks, 2006).

In a literature review by Evers and Ellger (2004), manifestations of MH can also be attributed to: a) psychiatric disorder, b) brain lesion, c) epilepsy and d) intoxication.