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A THEORY OF THE MUSICAL ABILITY VARIATION BASED ON THE
DISTRIBUTED AUDITORY PROCESSING FACILITATIONS TO THINK
TONE IMAGES AND TO RECALL SOUNDS OF THE WORDS AND
MELODIES BY READING THE NOTE SYMBOLS
Music school MultiMusa, Tampere, Finland
Kari Suoniemi Ph. D. 2012
Abstract
This empirical research used statistical (SPSS) methods to determine whether people had differences
in perceiving, discriminating and memorizing the basic elements of musical structures and whether
these abilities are linked to musical and language thinking skill variation. Two experiments were
conducted: musical ability test by Bentley, and identifying test of the familiar melodies without
words. The task of students (N=201), choir vocalists (N=120) and control group (N=70) were to read
note symbols and to recall and to identify the song names. The three questions asked were: 1) Do
there exist significant musical test score differences between the three test groups: students, choir
vocalists or control group measured by Bentley’s musical ability test? 2) How marked differences
there exist between control group, student group and choir singers group when the task is to think
tone images and to recall sounds of the words and melodies by reading the note symbols? 3) What
are the physiological structures and distributed neural processes related to musical thinking skill
variation to imaging auditory sounds and words by reading the note symbols? Results displayed
significant differences between control group and choir singer group relating to musicality test
success (p<.0001) and the ability to think and recall auditory tone images via note symbols
(p<.0001). Results also suggests that musical thinking process to image and recall tone sounds and
the words by reading note symbols are severely varied skill between test groups and that variation
can be based on several distributed working memory facilitations. Author suggests a theory of the
neural structures and connections between tone circles, articulatory loop, object association sensor,
word memory presentation and melody schema memory presentation.
Keywords: auditory sound image, word memory presentation, articulatory loop, memory recall, tone
circle, object association sensor
INTRODUCTION
Ability to think (audiation) tone images or to hum sound patterns in inner mind is a
complicated task to investigate because people appear to be highly subjective:
emotionally, functionally and neuroanatomically. A practical try to reveal musical
perception and auditory thinking ability differences is to measure how accurately
people can hear and remember pitches, melodies, chords and rhythms and how
these abilities are linked to different sound imaging and recalling abilities in
auditory and language domains. Neurophysiologic studies have displayed that
practicing music can have important consequences of the neural brain structures
accounting not only musical perception abilities but in cognitive domains in
general. For example musical training has hypothesized to facilitate pitch
processing in language (Magne, Schön and Besson 2006) and improve to identify
emotional prosody (Thompson, Schellenberg and Husain 2004). The studies
obtained with magneto encephalography method have demonstrated that Broca’s
area was not activated only by syntactic processing of linguistic phrases, but also by
syntactic processing of musical phrases (Maess, Koelsch, Gunter and Friederici
2001). An important question of the musicality research has been related to the
anatomy and function of Heschl’s gyrus (HG) and its sensory association areas.
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Studies have displayed that musicians and non-musicians differ for the existence of
specialized neural networks. This was accounted for the practise of motor skill or
interpretative perception that is able to change the activity of the brain areas or the
functioning locations (see Pantev, et al., 1998; Mazziotta, et al., 1982).
What are these mental cognitive interpretative and physiological motor abilities
linked to inner capacity to think words and auditory sounds? An answer could be
the structures of the genetic and acquired based working memory facilitations.
Working memory associates several different nucleuses and locations of the brain,
which are suggested to be organized as distributed modular systems and subsystems
(Fodor 1983; Peretz and Coltheart 2003; Piccirilli, Sciarma and Luzzi 2000). Fodor
has supposed that these mental modules have the following characteristic
properties: rapidity of operation, automatic, domain-specificity, informational
encapsulation, neural specificity and innateness (Peretz and Coltheart 2003).
Musical perception skills can become conscious by learning notes and chords but
if language skills are compared to musical skills, it is obvious, that listening to
music can be hypothesized to contain more unconscious neuronal features than
language skills. Cued recall and briming (Squire 1987, 159) are effective when
reading words. This means that looking at some first letter symbols of the word
people can hear/see immediately the word sound image in their inner mind but
when people look at a stream of the note symbols their do not usually perceive or
hear the sound. In general people try to sing intervals between tones to identify or to
learn a melody. Why reading of the note symbols is so difficult? Some studies
suggest that tone-deaf people with impaired sound perception and production have
reduced white matter connections. For example, the neural volume of the planum
temporale and the reduced neural connectivity of the arcuate fasciculus are
suggested to impair sound perception abilities (Ganong, 2005, 183; Loui, Alsop and
Schlaug, 2009).
There is not a common understanding of the connections between musical
sensory tracts and language abilities although there have been lot of research that
have displayed neurophysiological effects between language and musical
perception functions (Levitin and Menon 2003; Koelsch 2005; Bizley and Walker
2009; Tervaniemi et al. 2009). For example dyslexia have suggested to be in
connection to difficulties in perceiving rhythmic patterns in music or pulvinar is
suggested to be an integration nucleus between optic and acoustic systems i.e.
language and symbolic thinking process since it has reciprocal fiber connections
between the cortex of the parietal lobe and the dorsal temporal lobe (Kahle and
Frotscher 2010, 186).
Present study is a combination of ethnomusicological, psychological and
neurophysiologic research of musical tone thinking and memory abilities with a
theory of the working memory facilitations. Study displays how profound
musicality thinking and perception ability differences there are between people that
have learned to read note symbols and people that do not have musical hobbies such
as playing an instrument or singing in a choir.
Materials and Method
Subjects
The questionnaire was given to secondary school students (N=201) aged 15 to16
years, choir vocalists (N=120) aged 30 to 55, and control group (N=70) aged 30 to
3
50 years. Students were not involved in music-oriented school education. They
formed a good random sample of young Finnish people who mostly listened to
techno, rap and rock/pop music. Those in the control group did not personally
participate in musical activities and cannot name C major scale notes. They listened
for the most part to rock/pop, classical music and popular hits. Choir vocalists
listened to many different musical styles, probably due to their vast choir repertoire.
They listened to, for example, classical, rock/pop, popular hits, opera, folk and jazz
music.
Test materials
The two tests demonstrated were: 1) Bentley’s (1966) musical ability test, which
measured perceptual and memory abilities such as: pitch discrimination ability,
tonal perception and memory ability, chord perception (analysis) ability and
rhythmic perception and memory ability (see Suoniemi 2008, 286 – 288). 2) Note
samples of the four first bars by the five familiar melodies with the list of the seven
song names (see 2008, 285).
Procedure
The students were tested in classroom settings during a school hour. The students’
desks were far enough apart to prevent answers being copied from each other.
Choir vocalists were tested in their rehearsal amenities, and the control group in the
auditorium of Metso Library. The music ability test by Bentley involved listening
tasks from a cassette tape with English language instructions lasting some 35
minutes. The Finnish language version of the instructions was displayed on the
blackboard. Next was given the note samples of the five melodies without words
and the list of the seven song names. People were asked to hum melodies and to
identify them by numbering related tone symbols and song names.
Results
The results suggest that people in general have extensive ability differences to
perceive, discriminate and memorize the details of the musical test items and that
these differences exists already in 15-years-olds people. It is difficult to estimate
how much genetic heritage or musical exercises declare the significant difference
between the choir vocalists group and the control group. Choir vocalists have
systematically higher scores in all subtest parts, in particular, pitch discrimination
test scores and tonal memory test scores are significantly higher and their standard
deviation lower compared to the student group or the control group (Table 1). For
example, there is only 2.3 scores deviation of the means between the students and
the control group, but 10.9 score deviation between the control group and the choir
vocalist group (this being significant, p<.0001).
Table 1. The test score distribution of the three test groups measured by
Bentley’s musical ability test
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TEST
GROUPS
Students
Choir
vocalists
Control
group
Total
TONAL
MEMORY
TEST
(MAX. 10)
201
6.6
2.1
CHORD
ANALYSIS
TEST (MAX. 20)
N
Mean
Std. D.
PITCH
DISCRIMINAT
ION
TEST
(MAX. 20)
201
14.1
4.1
201
11.3
3.1
RHYTHMIC
MEMORY
TEST (MAX.
10)
201
7.6
2.2
TOTAL
SCORE
(MAX.
60)
201
39.6
8.5
N
Mean
Std. D.
120
17.0
2.4
120
8.5
1.2
120
13.6
3.2
120
8.7
1.4
120
47.8
6.4
N
Mean
Std. D.
70
13.1
4.3
70
6.0
2.5
70
10.6
2.9
70
7.2
2.1
70
36.9
8.2
N
Mean
Std. D.
391
14.8
4.0
391
7.1
2.2
391
11.9
3.3
391
7.9
2.0
391
41.6
8.9
It is probable that significant difference between choir vocalists and control group is
derived from the ability to image, manipulate and repeat tonal sounds clearly and
accurately in the inner thought process. I suppose, however, that the musical
competence is in relation to the several different working memory facilitations (see
list page 5). The second test was revealing the group of extra musical abilities
related on inner thinking process of the note symbols and memory recall of the tone
images and the song words.
Table 2. The test score distributions of the right identified melodies based on the
auditory thinking skill and recall of the tone images and the words by reading the
note symbols.
The counts and percents of the right identified melodies related to right
Total
song names (max.5)
Test groups
Students
Choir vocalists
Control group
Total
0
1
2
3
4
5
43
38
24
18
17
32
172
25,0 %
22,1 %
14,0 %
10,5 %
9,9 %
18,6 %
100 %
2
1
3
8
15
91
120
1,7 %
,8 %
2,5 %
6,7 %
12,5 %
75,8 %
100 %
19
10
11
6
12
10
68
27,9 %
14,7 %
16,2 %
8,8 %
17,6 %
14,7 %
100 %
64
49
38
32
44
133
360
17,8 %
13,6 %
10,6 %
8,9 %
12,2 %
36,9 %
100 %
Exercising to read note symbols can explain to much better test scores of the choir
vocalists group but not (Table 2) the control group’s quite high (14.7 %) percents to
identify the right melodies although they were not able to read notes. Results
suggest that the inner thinking process to image tone sounds and words related to
note symbols are possible without exercising or knowing the names of the note
symbols. However, the inner tone imaging ability is severely varied because 27.9 %
of the people in the control group were not able to identify any song.
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Discussion
Musicality test (Table 1) displayed that there were significant test score differences
between the choir vocalist and the control group. Bentley’s musical ability test is
measuring pitch, tone and rhythmic discrimination accuracy and memory abilities.
For example, person’s task in the tonal memory subtest was to verify which one of
the five tones have been changed between the first and second played versions.
Thus, the working memory capacity to repeat, to verify and to recall tones from the
schematic memory are necessary factors linked to tone thinking and humming
processes.
Thinking ability to hear tone images in inner mind contains not only sounds of
the tones but also the sounds of the words that are recalled from the schematic
memory. Cued recall is an important factor of the schema memory presentation of
the melodies and the words presentation because familiar sound images are easer to
recall to conscious mind by the facilitation of the priming effect. A theory to
process and to image auditory sounds by reading note symbols can be linked to
distributed and associative neural tracts of the auditory cortex. I suppose that
physiological and mental processes to image, to recall and to manipulate several
different tone sound images in inner thinking process contains at least eight
partially distributed abilities that can be comprehended as working memory
facilitations. A list of these thinking and memory facilitations can be tentatively
stated as follows:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
An ability to think a sound image of the distinct interval
An ability to think a sound image of the distinct rhythmical figure
An ability to think a sound image of the distinct pitch and timbre
An ability to remember and recall a word of the song
An ability to remember and recall the tones of the distinct melody
An ability to sense emotional associations of the melodies and words
An ability to pronounce a right articulation of the distinct word
An ability to learn a new melody
This complicated group of perception and thinking abilities are suggested to be
distributed in musical impairment or deficit studies (see Wertheim and Botez 1961;
Piccirilli, Sciarma and Luzzi 2000; Halpern 2001; Suoniemi 2008). It is apparent
that a person who suffers from amusia or dementia can have one or more deficits
linked to these musical thinking, learning and memory abilities. For example a
person who has lost his or her ability to speak may still have the ability to sing
melodies with words. This could be possible if articulatory loop and tone circle are
able to recall and associate the melody schema presentation and the word memory
presentation to function in concert (see Figure 1).
I suppose that there are studies describing the tone sequence’s (circles)
hierarchical locations. For example a study (Patterson et al., 2002) suggests the
hierarchical system of the auditory nerve construction as follows: (1) the extraction
of time-interval information from the neural firing pattern in the auditory nerve
construction probably occurs in the brainstem and thalamus. (2) Determining the
specific values of a pitch and its salience from the interval occurs in lateral HG. (3)
The pitch changes in discrete steps and tracking the changes in a melody occur
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beyond auditory cortex in STG and/or lateral planum polare (see Hall et al. 2002;
Griffiths et al. 2001; Wessinger et al. 2001). One of the most important
phenomenons of the tone circle is its spectral processing capacity that means of our
general ability to discriminate different sound timbers and instruments.
The interpretative functions of the temporal lobe and angular gyrus are usually
highly developed in one cerebral hemisphere, which is called the dominant or
categorical hemisphere. Long superior and inferior association fibers connect
frontal lobe, temporal and parietal lobes (Kahle & Frotscher 2010, 262) and their
connections probably display an important part of the conscious thinking process of
the tone heights and timbres. A research of the amusic people suggests that they
could have limited awareness of the semitone pitch differences because neural pitch
representation cannot make contact with the musical pitch knowledge along the
auditory-frontal neural pathway (Peretz et al., 2009). It is likely that a person who
cannot think the tone images of the scales and semitone intervals is not able to sing
a song in tune. This could be often true because out of tune singers are not aware of
their singing accuracy. The angular gyrus behind the Wernicke’s area appears to
process information from words in such a way that they can be converted in to the
auditory forms (Ganong 2005, 274). An essential fiber track is a projection from
Wernicke’s area via the association fibers to Broca’s area and to the motor cortex
that initiates the appropriate movements of the lips, tongue and larynx because it is
obviously related to singing with articulated words of a melody. A (PET) study
suggests that the supplementary motor area (SMA) was activated with humming
strategy during imagery generation (Halpern 2001). Thus, the supplementary motor
area of the tongue and the lips can be prerequisite to the inner imagery and
humming processes.
Based on several researches it seems likely that musical abilities contain several
distributed or modular systems. Figure 1 presents an idea of the distributed system
that contains the tone circle and its relation to the phonological circle, object
association sensor and word presentation memory (see Freud 1991, 183; Baddeley
1984; Posner and Raichle 1994, 116). Phonological circle representing Broca’s
area, tone circle Heschl’s gyrus and object association sensor thalamus.
Working memory process
phonological circle
(interpretative)
tone circle
(periodicity)
articulatory loop
word images
word presentation
memory
object association sensor
auditory sound images
melody schema presentation
memory
Figure 1. A simplified neural description of the tone thinking processes where
object association sensor transmits tone images, memory recall and synchronise
melody schema presentation and language memory presentations.
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The meaning of the object association sensor is to connect and to transmit neural
information between secondary sensory areas different motor sensory areas between
memory presentations. Tone circle’s original meaning may be seen as an older
communication device that man has used in ancient time when phonological circle
was still poorly developed. Notice that tone circle can transmit information not only
by pitches but by means of sound timber and rhythmic stress. In this model the
object association sensor and the articulatory loop can connect mutual sensory
functions between language and musical sound domain. But, it can be considered
too that the tone circle and the phonological circle can function quite properly
without each other. Thus, a person can sing a song with words but can not speak an
interpretative words or reasonable sentences. Does this kind of deficit mean that
tone circle can transmit word’s sounds but not their meanings?
Present study displays that musical talent can be a group of the musical abilities,
which are based on inner tone imaging, recalling, learning and memory capacities
manipulated by the working memory facilitations. It is likely that there are lot of
musical ability variations among ordinary people because one improperly factor of
this ability group can weaken working memory facilitations and imaging process.
Musicality test scores indicated that all four perception accuracy abilities: pitch
discrimination, tonal memory, chord analysis and rhythmic memory tests have
systematic variation between the test groups. Results are suggesting that there are
neural developmental sensory differences between these eight facilitations that can
account for musical ability variation. However, it is probable that concentration,
volition and awareness can have physically powerful effect on these facilitations. If
musical ability differences are normally distributed genetic based phenomenon
among population it would be expected that we have neuronal differences, which
are a part of the subject’s personality. Thus, it is likely that 17% of the normal
population (Cuddy et al.,2005) that have self-identified to be as tone deaf can be in
a range of the normal distribution.
It is quite unlikely that deviations of the low and the high musicality perception
and sound imaging abilities are a mental talent controlled only a few genes
(Suoniemi 2010) but the group of several distributed abilities and a group of the
several chromosomes, which are controlling distributed sensory and cognitive
instincts, individual emotional excitations and imaging capabilities of the words
and the auditory sounds. Brain consist highly complex circuits that communicate
using electrical and chemical signals. An important auditory nerve centre is
thalamic nuclear organisation, which task is to control the timing of the electrical
signals between memory recall and tone sound images. Maybe it is possible in the
near future to trace these physical circuits and explain musical ability variations by
means of the structural effects of the genetic variation. It is likely that distributed
neural structure is a helpful model to explain a complicated parallel perceptual
thinking and memory processes between auditory and language domains.
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