Published online: 24 August 2005; | doi:10.

1038/news050822-4

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050822/full/050822-
4.html

Brain cells tune in to music

Neurons respond selectively to distinct pitches.

Roxanne Khamsi

The discovery of a group of

pitch-sensitive cells in the
brain has sent
reverberations through the
field of music perception.
Researchers think that
studying these neurons will
reveal how our minds grasp
songs and speech.

Most people can hear that

Play it again: how can we tell a C is

a C regardless of the instrument it
is played on?

© Punchstock

two instruments are playing

the same note, even if they
sound as different as a
trumpet and a piano. Our
perception of fundamental
sound frequency or 'pitch'
remains constant despite
differences in an
instrument's acoustical
traits.

This holds true even when

the fundamental frequency
is actually missing from a
complex sound. If several
strings are plucked such
that they vibrate at their
higher harmonics, at 800,
1,000 and 1,200 hertz for
example, we will perceive
the sound as belonging to
the same pitch as the
primary harmonic of those
strings: 200 hertz. For
centuries scholars have
puzzled over how the brain
does this.

In recent years, researchers

have looked at the role
played by the primary
auditory cortex, the brain
region known to digest
sounds. Human brain scans
have indicated that a
peripheral bit of this brain
region is active when we try
to identify pitch. But no one
could find cells that
responded to specific
frequencies, leaving it a
mystery how we interpret
them.

There are about a thousand

studies one can think of doing after
this.

Josh McDermott
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology

A study with marmoset

monkeys (Callithrix jacchus)
has now shown up specific
neurons that do just that.
"This is the first evidence
that there are individual
neurons in the brain that are
encoding for pitch," explains
Josh McDermott, a music
psychologist based in
Cambridge at the
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.

Striking a nerve

Daniel Bendor and Xiaoqin

Wang of the Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore,
Maryland, identified the
neurons by recording the
response of the monkeys'
brain cells while the animals
heard various notes from a
computer. They found that
individual cells consistently
got excited by sounds at
specific frequencies, or
multiples of that frequency.

Just as humans can perceive

a pitch even if the
fundamental is missing, the
monkeys' neurons for 200
hertz lit up when presented
with a mix of 800-, 1,000-
and 1,200-hertz sounds.
The findings appear this
week in Nature1.

Exactly how a given

frequency sets off a single
cell remains unclear. But
experts say the location of
this unique population of
neurons is an important first
step.

McDermott says the

discovery will open doors for
investigators to explore how
other primates, including
humans, appreciate music.
"There are about a thousand
studies one can think of
doing after this," he says.

Already there is speculation

that damage to cells in this
brain region could explain
why some people can't carry
a tune. "There are a lot of
different possibilities, but
this might be an area that
could be affected when
someone is tone deaf,"
Bendor says.

References

1. Bendor D.& Wang,

X., et al. Nature,
436. 1161 - 1165
(2005). | Article |