Valproate reopens critical-period learning of absolute pitch (2013)
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
As a musicologist, musician and someone who acquired some level of absolute pitch at ~14 years, I have to disagree.
Anecdata:
Musicians distinguish between acquired and given/natural absolute pitch and additionally between active and passive AP. Naming a note and producing/singing one are very different skills.
In my personal experience absolute pitch is a spectrum of several skills. For example:
- I can reliably name (single) notes played on a piano or similar instruments
- Most times I cannot name the root note of complex chords
- I cannot reliably name notes played by wind instruments
- If I can sing a note in my lowest register I can name most notes reliably
Just for completeness:
Musically speaking, absolute pitch is not a particularly useful skill and can be very limiting/painful for people.
> Participants heard one synthesized piano tone per trial, for a total of 18 trials, in a semi-randomized order, the only constraint being that successive tones were separated by an interval greater than one octave. The tones were 500 ms in duration and interleaved by 3750 ms of silence, and were identical to the stimuli used during training
Only the first stimuli is a test of absolute pitch. Afterwards, relative pitch can easily help.
There is no measure (that I could see) that prevents the subjects from simply memorizing the feeling of hearing a tune because they had just gone through heavy training.
For instance, I don't have absolute pitch. But because I tune a violin daily, I can remember what A4 sound like, and deduce what other notes sound like based on that. People with absolute pitch doesn't have to do that.
In addition, testing with 12 notes is way too easy.
So, I would say "Valproate" improves the effect of ear-training, instead of saying the subjects really developed AP.
How might a test be designed to take that into account?
In practise, spacing the tests out more than a day and asking subjects not to listen for other things between tests might help, without being foolproof.
But that is going to take a long time, so not ideal for a lab setting.
Absolute pitch is easier to recognize in life, because people who possess it can name a pitch completely out of the blue, and of pretty much anything, like a sneeze, door slam, not just piano tones.
So, there are three traits of AP --- which I gathered anecdotally, not scientifically --- that I think that might help to distinguish AP from a good RP.
1. AP works on anything with a stable, audible frequency. Memorizing the sound cannot provide that. (e.g. I cannot tell the frequency of a door slam, even though I can tune a violin without a tuner.) So, potentially, the test would use the type of sound they didn't train with.
2. AP also works really fast. As soon as they hear the sound, they know the pitch. No time for calculation. So, the subject should be asked to answer immediately.
3. People with AP doesn't seem to make mistakes at all.
All of these have led me to believe that AP is not a skill of adeptness. It's like they perceive sounds in a fundamentally different manner than I do, as if there is a separate mapping of frequency in their brain.
Again, this comment is based on my experience with people who have absolute pitch. I don't have a background in neuroscience to understand how AP works precisely, or to state definitively that the traits I described are universal among people with AP.
1. They consciously use relative pitch from a known reference tone when identifying another pitch "out of the blue", and
2. They have worked hard on acquiring relative pitch, which is something one consciously practises.
The question is: If you can remember what C1 or whatever sounds like and then deduce from that, is it not just a way of more learning to be able to remember the other ones too?
Is there really a fundamental, functional difference between absolute pitch and "normal" hearing?
Yes, but that will take a long time and much dedication, and I don't know anybody interested in trying to remember many notes. There is also the risk that the more notes you try to memorize, the less reliable it gets. It's a lot more practical to just remember a few anchor notes and put the effort into training relative pitch.
For the purpose of performing music (or any practical activity), I'd say a good relatively pitch and a good memory of a few anchor notes, is as useful as absolute pitch. Functionally, AP isn't much more valuable.
But I do think, based on observation, that there is something fundamentally different with AP. It's like they hear sounds very differently, and their brain has a special mapping of frequency that I don't have.
They recognize very subtle deviations in frequency. I have had a person tell me "It's too sharp" when I was only off by 3 cents according to the tuner.
They don't make mistakes and they are fast, almost naming the pitch as soon as they hear it. It's effortless, precise, and accurate.
Ok, but THAT I have. I don't have absolute pitch, but I was always able to tune my cello more precisely than my teacher. (and other instruments too, not limited to one person)
Another trick: tune then relative to the first string tuned, not incrementally from one tuned string to the next. That way you end up much closer to the ideal.
To give an example. I was playing board games with an acquaintance with AP. Someone tinked a glass or something (brief, very high pitch / edge of musical range). She named the pitch without hesitation, and noted that it was slightly sharp. (I of course couldn't confirm, but had no reason to doubt her.)
I have very good relative pitch and pitch recall. E.g. I can tune a guitar quickly by ear without relying on beat notes, and can do so without a prior absolute reference (I have memorized E, A, and Bb), though I may be ~30 cents off the reference. I can reliably identify the key of a song I heard months or years ago by comparing it to memorized references.
But I have to think about it, imagining and computing pitches and intervals in my head. And hearing other pitches in the interim throws off my recall.
To do these things instantly, with precision of cents, is magic to me. It's the difference between a savant producing the product of two large numbers instantly, and me working through the multiplication algorithm in my head.
This would make VPA a major nootropic
https://www.nice.org.uk/news/article/nice-publishes-a-summar...
https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg137/resources/valproate-i...
https://bnf.nice.org.uk/drug/sodium-valproate.html
> MHRA/CHM advice: Valproate medicines: contraindicated in women and girls of childbearing potential unless conditions of Pregnancy Prevention Programme are met (April 2018)
> Valproate is highly teratogenic and evidence supports that use in pregnancy leads to neurodevelopmental disorders (approx. 30–40% risk) and congenital malformations (approx. 10% risk).
> Valproate must not be used in women and girls of childbearing potential unless the conditions of the Pregnancy Prevention Programme are met (see Conception and contraception) and only if other treatments are ineffective or not tolerated, as judged by an experienced specialist.
> Use of valproate in pregnancy is contra-indicated for migraine prophylaxis [unlicensed] and bipolar disorder; it must only be considered for epilepsy if there is no suitable alternative treatment (see Pregnancy).
> Women and girls (and their carers) must be fully informed of the risks and the need to avoid exposure to valproate medicines in pregnancy; supporting materials have been provided to use in the implementation of the Pregnancy Prevention Programme (see Prescribing and dispensing Information). The MHRA advises that:
> GPs must recall all women and girls who may be of childbearing potential, provide the Patient Guide, check they have been reviewed by a specialist in the last year and are on highly effective contraception;
> Specialists must book in review appointments at least annually with women and girls under the Pregnancy Prevention Programme, re-evaluate treatment as necessary, explain clearly the conditions as outlined in the supporting materials and complete and sign the Risk Acknowledgement Form—copies of the form must be given to the patient or carer and sent to their GP;
> Pharmacists must ensure valproate medicines are dispensed in whole packs whenever possible—all packs dispensed to women and girls of childbearing potential should have a warning label either on the carton or via a sticker. They must also discuss risks in pregnancy with female patients each time valproate medicines are dispensed, ensure they have the Patient Guide and have seen their GP or specialist to discuss their treatment and the need for contraception.
From an evolutionary perspective, what could possibly be the reason for this?
A native English speaker has no problem distinguishing /θ/ as in "this" from /s/ as in "sis", but not very many languages need you to make this distinction, so people who learn English later in life have a very hard time with it.
Likewise, English speakers can't tell the difference between long and short vowels, or long and short consonants. That's because there are no long and short vowels or consonants in English--the distinction doesn't matter. But you'd have a hard time learning Finnish or Japanese without it.
And then there are the weird cases, like how in English we have rules for aspirating and voicing /t/ and /k/. If you speak Mandarin then you might pick out /t/ as if it were /d/, but only in certain positions. So "stop" might sound like "sdop", but "top" sounds like "top".
English has the distinction for vowels and it does matter. “can’t” and “cunt” have the same vowel sound in some accents, but “can’t” needs a long vowel sound while “cunt” needs a short vowel sound. Native English speakers speak those those two words quite distinctly.
Lose/loose is another pair (confusingly “lose“ has a long vowel sound and “loose” has a short vowel sound.)
Moon needs a long vowel sound to sound right. I am sure you can think of other examples.
The theories I've heard are that we are born with absolute pitch and develop relative pitch later on, losing absolute pitch at around eight months old. We also develop the ability to associate octaves, so C and C' start sounding "alike" at some point, but this happens because we are exposed to music which treats them as equal.
I find it hard to believe that it would have "null survivability benefits"--it seems pretty useful for distinguishing the sounds of different animals.
and my point is “there need not be one at all, perhaps absolute pitch is a spandrel.”
I don't follow. They ARE strongly related because an octave is a power of two multiple.
Just because a mathematical relationship exists doesn't mean that we perceive it.
Not all music is built around 2:1 octaves. People who grew up listening to music with 2:1 octaves can identify pitch classes, people who grew up in isolated tribes without exposure to that kind of music--hear C and C' simply as different notes. People with absolute pitch sometimes have the opposite problem--they can accurately recognize the pitch class of C or C', but are more likely to mistake C for C' or vice versa.
Real music often deviates from the 2:1 ratio anyway. Only certain instruments produce a near pure harmonic spectrum, most instruments have some inharmonicity, and these instruments are often played according to their spectrum, rather than the harmonic series.
They are made up of a series of overtones. By far the loudest of these overtones is the 2nd harmonic... which is double the base frequency aka one octave.
This is not some artificial construct but a fundamental part of how things vibrate.
It seems the same to us because we're building on hundreds of years of music that tells us it is. If you're comfortable with the tonic moving, the octave is no more "the same" than any other note.
Most of what we take for granted in music is learned through exposure.
Not true in general. There is no reason to expect the 2nd harmonic to be louder than the others. Some instruments produce mostly odd-numbered harmonics, such as the clarinet.
> This is not some artificial construct but a fundamental part of how things vibrate.
That's only true in a one-dimensional world. Instruments in the three-dimensional world are either mode-locked (not freely vibrating) or have some amount of inharmonicity. This is why the octaves on a piano are not tuned to 2:1 ratios, as I mentioned.
From the article you cited:
> This list of frequencies is for a theoretically ideal piano. On an actual piano the ratio between semitones is slightly larger...
For more details, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stretched_tuning
Or,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_acoustics#The_Railsback_...
It is also said to wane with age. If it is true, there you'd have a cure.
Would it be helpful with the accent, as babies till young age create frequency statistic of sounds and that is the reason why it sounds so strange when we speaking non native language?
Edit: Oh, sorry, that was for perfect pitch. You asked for relative pitch, which was I guess a joke?
Or maybe it was a question of can someone learn to accurately identify musical intervals who does not have perfect pitch?