Congenital amusia | Brain | Oxford Academic

Congenital amusia | Brain | Oxford Academic: In this 2002 study, "a research effort has been made to document in detail the behavioural manifestations of congenital amusia."

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Big new study finds "sex differences in music perception are negligible"

This is a fascinating finding for all humans, not just amusics. For a start, the scale of the study is impressive: "a test of music processing ability in 360,009 men and 194,291 women from 208 countries." And the findings favored the hypothesis of "no sex difference in general musical ability" (with a Bayes Factor of 0.6 for the statistically inclined).  As the authors put it: "These results suggest that it is unlikely that music evolved in the context of sexual selection." In other words, our musical ability did not evolve to enhance our appeal to the opposite sex, although this "is in contrast to music-related traits in non-human animals" and in contrast to some "other non-musical human traits."  The bottom line, based on this huge sample, is that musical ability offers, in terms of selection "no consistent advantage for either sex." And somehow, as an amusic, I find that surprisingly reassuring. It suggests that my inabilit...
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Neurobiology of Congenital Amusia: Trends in Cognitive Sciences

An interesting way to describe amusa: "The core deficit of congenital amusia is characterized by a lack of awareness of acquired musical pitch knowledge." And good to know that studying those of us with "lifelong musical pitch deficits...can help to reveal what is specific to music processing at all levels from behavior and brain to genes." Neurobiology of Congenital Amusia: Trends in Cognitive Sciences
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What's amusing about amusia?

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Welcome to 4Amusia.com , a place to find out more about something called amusia, a condition that can make it impossible to carry a tune or learn to play a musical instrument. Widespread ignorance of this condition—commonly referred to in derogatory terms like tone deafness or tin ears—can lead to social and emotional problems for those who have it. I know, because I have amusia. Amusia is defined as: "a musical disorder that appears mainly as a defect in processing pitch but also encompasses musical memory and recognition" ( Wikipedia ). Some studies suggest that as many as 4% of people are born with an innate inability to recognize musical tones or to reproduce them. This is referred to as congenital amusia. In 2018, I discovered that my lifelong failure to sing or learn guitar—despite great effort—was due to congenital amusia, not some weird character defect (although you can still find music coaches who insist that amusiacs are just being lazy). When time permits, I pl...
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