Seung-Goo Kim | Auditory cortex in musicians with absolute pitch

Absolute pitch (AP) is a rare auditory perception that enables effortless perception of pitch chroma of any given tonal sound without external references. As categorization of pitch into pitch chroma is essential for AP, we investigated structural and functional organization of the auditory cortex. Using relaxometry at an ultra-high-field, the degree of cortical myelination was compared between musicians with and without AP. We found AP-specific increase of cortical myelin in the right planum polare (PP), which is known to be sensitive to pitch chroma compared to pitch height. Based on the dual auditory pathway hypothesis, we speculate that the perceptual stage of AP processing highly depends the ventral pathway, which includes PP. In the second study, we further investigated functional organization of the right PP using whole-brain resting-state fMRI data. Functional connectivity (in terms of cross-correlation and cross-coherence) of the right PP was found to be greater in AP musicians compared to non-AP musicians in several frontal and temporal regions. We believe the results support our conjecture on the importance of the PP and the ventral pathway that extends to the inferior frontal gyrus. Further implications will be discussed during the talk.

Poster