Psychology Atlas

How The Mind Works
Sign In
Text size
100%
Theme
Psychological Phenomena

Amusia

Perception and Psychophysics Effects

Amusia, popularly known as tone deafness, is a musical disorder that chiefly affects the processing of pitch, along with musical memory and recognition. It occurs in two forms: acquired amusia, which results from brain damage, and congenital amusia, a music-processing difficulty present from birth, which more recent research based on a sample of twenty thousand people estimates affects around one and a half percent of the population, well below earlier estimates of four percent. The disorder can affect rhythm, melody and the emotional processing of music independently of one another, and some patients with acquired amusia lose the ability to produce musical sounds while their speech remains intact, the reverse of certain aphasic patients who lose speech but can still sing. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts
Classification
Type of Phenomenon
Perceptual Phenomenon 1
First Described Year
1865 1
Connections

In Branch

Source Amusia (Wikipedia)
Sources
1. Amusia (Wikipedia)
  • Lead section
    Amusia, also called being tone-deaf, is a musical disorder that appears mainly as a defect in processing pitch but also encompasses musical memory and recognition.
  • History
    In 1865, Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud described the first series of cases that involved the loss of music abilities that were due to brain injury.
  • In Branch: Psychology of Music, Article categories: Music psychology
View the Source
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.