SGER: Williams Syndrome and Music Cognition

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9617078 LENHOFF A group of mentally disabled people having the condition called Williams syndrome may offer clues to the complex steps by which the brain processes musical information in a distinctive manner. Although people born with Williams syndrome are like the majority of mentally disabled people in being weak in most cognitive processes, such as in arithmetic and in solving simple problems, many with the syndrome have enhanced language skills and uncanny musical abilities. To date, however, most of the observations of their musical abilities come from reports of teachers and parents. Hence, one of the goals of this research is to document and measure those abilities in order to help researchers get at an understanding of how the brain is able to handle music information, such as recognizing pitch, learning melodies and lyrics, keeping rhythm, and retaining such information for periods of years. People with Williams syndrome constitute a unique population, each lacking a piece of the same chromosome and sharing many behavioral traits. Among those shared traits appear to be the way they hear and process musical information. Mounting anecdotal evidence regarding the innate musical abilities of those with Williams syndrome is becoming quite compelling: (1) While Williams children are thought to have short attention spans, their attention span for listening to and participating in musical activities appears to be surprisingly long. (2) Although most can not read musical notation, many have absolute and relative pitch. (3) A number have uncanny rhythm, being able to learn complex drum beats, such as 7/4, in a short session. (4) Many are able to retain complex music (some in a variety of languages), including both the words of many verses of long ballads and the melodies, for periods of years. (5) Those who learn and sing in foreign languages have near-perfect accents. (6) Experienced Williams musicians have a facility with harmony. (7) A n umber can improvise and compose lyrics with great facility. (8) Virtually all lack stage fright, which often plagues professionally trained musicians. More recently, the part of the brain, the planum temporale, shown to be enlarged in professional musicians with perfect pitch, was also shown to be enlarged in a random population of Williams people. Another goal of this project, thus, is to determine if there is a link between that part of the brain and the processing of musical information. The mechanism by which the brain processes musical information is one of life's great mysteries. Studies of music in Williams people, in whom musical abilities are not generally confounded with any general cognitive capabilities, may offer clues to understanding those mysteries of musical cognition in the general population. ***