There is a great deal of debate around this question. In the research, the term Absolute Pitch (AP) is used for the more common term of perfect pitch. This recent study points to a stronger genetic link than previously thought.

Do you know someone who seems to have rhythm coming out of every part or pore and other people who couldn’t walk to a beat if their life depended on it?

Researchers have known for sometime that the brain structures (parts) of a person with absolute pitch has specific areas that are identified as unique or different. However, they don’t know how those structural differences might function or connect in equally unique or specific ways.

You have probably heard of grey matter but have you heard of white matter? White matter in our brain is tissue composed of nerve fibres.

We used to think that there was a centre for every major processing task, like language or maths. We know that there are both centres for processing as well as a complex set of interlinking and overlapping networks that contribute to the processing of information.

Dr Psyche Loui is a psychologist, neuroscientist and musician who investigates how music can be used to understand the brain. She is a violinist and works to connect our understanding of the brain with the experience of being a music learner and performing musicians.

There is an interesting term in this article – experience-dependent plasticity. Here is a good plain language definition that also happens to include a musical reference.

Here is one of those research sentences that are so useful when we are explaining how music learning impacts on every child’s development.

Finally, that song that keeps playing on a loop inside our heads for no apparent reason has a name – stuck song syndrome!

Do men and women hear differently? Maybe. This report speaks on the lack of auditory processing differences at birth and in young children, but how differences may appear in adolescents as puberty changes our brains and bodies.

If we can shut down our inner critic when we improvise, does that mean we could transfer that idea across to other parts of our lives. And, what does that mean for classically trained musicians?

If you are a musician, then you really do hear the world differently! This study looked at expectation and prediction, and if musical training had any influence on the differences we hear.