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Neuropsychologia 2021 Mar 20;156:107833. Epub 2021 Mar 20.

Medical Psychological Center, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, 410011, China; Medical Psychological Institute of Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, 410011, China; National Clinical Research Center on Mental Disorders, Changsha, Hunan, 410011, China. Electronic address:

Congenital amusia is as a neurodevelopment disorder primarily defined by impairment in pitch discrimination and pitch memory. Interestingly, it has been reported that individuals with congenital amusia also exhibit deficits in face recognition (prosopagnosia). One explanation of such comorbidity is that the neural substrates of pitch recognition and face recognition may be similar. Read More

Neuropsychologia 2021 Feb 26;155:107811. Epub 2021 Feb 26.

Unité de Recherche en Neurosciences Cognitives (Unescog), Center for Research in Cognition & Neurosciences (CRCN), Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium; Fonds de La Recherche Scientifique-FNRS (FRS-FNRS), Brussels, Belgium.

Developmental dyslexia and congenital amusia are two specific neurodevelopmental disorders that affect reading and music perception, respectively. Similarities at perceptual, cognitive, and anatomical levels raise the possibility that a common factor is at play in their emergence, albeit in different domains. However, little consideration has been given to what extent they can co-occur. Read More

Brain Lang 2021 Apr 9;215:104908. Epub 2021 Feb 9.

Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China; Brain and Mind Institute, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. Electronic address:

Perceptual adaptation is an active cognitive process where listeners re-analyse speech categories based on new contexts/situations/talkers. It involves top-down influences from higher cortical levels on lower-level auditory processes. Individuals with congenital amusia have impaired pitch processing with reduced connectivity between frontal and temporal regions. Read More

Front Hum Neurosci 2020 25;14:566841. Epub 2021 Jan 25.

International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada.

Congenital amusia in its most common form is a disorder characterized by a musical pitch processing deficit. Although pitch is involved in conveying emotion in music, the implications for pitch deficits on musical emotion judgements is still under debate. Relatedly, both limited and spared musical emotion recognition was reported in amusia in conditions where emotion cues were not determined by musical mode or dissonance. Read More

Front Psychol 2020 30;11:581410. Epub 2020 Sep 30.

Research Centre for Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience, Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China.

Previous studies have shown that for congenital amusics, long-term tone language experience cannot compensate for lexical tone processing difficulties. However, it is still unknown whether such difficulties are merely caused by domain-transferred insensitivity in lower-level acoustic processing and/or by higher-level phonological processing of linguistic pitch as well. The current P300 study links and extends previous studies by uncovering the neurophysiological mechanisms underpinning lexical tone perception difficulties in Mandarin-speaking amusics. Read More