A person with perfect intonation can identify notes without any context, such as those played on a piano. （*luis alvarez via getty images）
In his book Musicophilia, renowned neuroscientist Oliver Sacks describes Sir Frederick Ouseley, a former professor at the University of Oxford, his extraordinary ability to recognize the pitch of everyday sound. For example, he says that it "thunders in g" and "the wind whistles in d".
Ouseley has perfect pitch, also known as absolute pitch – an extraordinary, rare ability to recognize or produce a particular note without reference notes as a guide.
Someone with this ability (absolute pitch) can name notes as immediately and effortlessly as most people name colors," Diana Deutsch, an adjunct professor at Stanford University's Center for Computing Research on Acoustic Computing and professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California, San Diego, told Live Science in an email.
But why do some people have this extraordinary ability while others don't?
First of all, it is important to note that absolute pitch is different from "relative pitch", which describes a person's ability to distinguish between pitches of two or more notes – an essential skill for a home to play in an orchestra. But only 1 in 10,000 people have absolute pitch, and scientists don't yet know what causes this ability.
However, there are several theories. The first has to do with genetics, since this skill can be passed down in families. However, identifying specific genetic causes has proven difficult.
Researchers tried to find DNA markers for absolute pitch, but despite several suggestions, none proved conclusive," Deutsch said. It can also be difficult to separate the effects of genetics from a person's environment, for example, parents with absolute tone may be more likely to take the time to teach their children.
Another explanation is the "critical period" theory. Just like our ability to learn Xi language, there may be a specific stage of development where humans are more likely to develop absolute pitch based on their exposure to certain environmental influences. For example, one study found that 40% of families who started training at or below had absolute pitch, while 3% started training after age 9.
Deutsch's research on speakers of tonal languages such as Mandarin, Cantonese, and Vietnamese supports this critical period theory.
In these languages, words have completely different meanings, depending on the lexical tone in which they are spoken," Deutsch said. (Lexical intonation is the pitch of a word.) For example, if you say the word "ma" in one tone, it means "mother," but in another, it could mean "horse," she says.
Therefore, when children Xi the language, they begin to associate the meaning of words with the tone of speech. If they later decide to take a ** class, the same principle can be applied to the Xi of ** tones.
Scientists don't fully understand why some people have perfect pitch, but some theories exist. （*yellow dog productions via getty images）
In one study, Deutsch and her team found that Mandarin students at ** colleges in China were more likely to have absolute pitch than English students at ** colleges in the United States. Interestingly, in another study, they found that English students with absolute pitch were very good at memorizing long lists of spoken numbers.
This may have fostered a connection between the notes and their early colloquial names," Deutsch said. As a result, she said, the ability to have an "exceptionally strong" natural memory voice could affect whether someone gets an absolute pitch.
Other scientists believe that with enough training, anyone can achieve absolute pitch at any time, although attempts to prove this have had little success, Deutsch said.
In 2015, psychology professor Howard Nusbaum and his colleagues Stephen Van Hedger and Shannon Heald, who were working at the University of Chicago at the time, showed that it was possible to train people to achieve absolute pitch. However, this ability depends on whether they have good auditory working memory. Remembering Your Mother's Voice is an example of this memory, Nussbaum told Live Science.
Keith Schneider, a professor of psychology and brain science at the University of Delaware, and colleagues found that the auditory cortex (the part of the brain that processes sound) in a professional home with absolute pitch is much larger than in other people who don't have absolute pitch or who don't have training. He told Live Science that other people's brains also respond to a wider range of sound frequencies than their brains.
However, there is a risk of losing absolute pitch, Nussbaum said. In one study, when he and his team slowly tuned the ** they played to a group of people with absolute pitch, they found that the participants lost the ability to detect note tuning. He said that flat notes sound out of tune, while chorus notes sound sharp.
This shows that the note-taking knowledge that people have is not chiseled into stone in your brain;It's just recorded there, but it's context-sensitive," Nussbaum said. In other words, the mental representation of notes changes with experience.
However, as Sachs writes in The Lovers, there is no or no absolute pitch, and the star may still be waiting.
Absolute pitch doesn't necessarily matter even for the ** family – Mozart has it, but Wagner and Schumann lack it," Sachs wrote.