在当今社会，音乐无处不在，聆听音乐已成为现代人的一种生活方式。但是，人们经常抱怨听不懂音乐，听懂音乐似乎成为音乐工作者的专利。这实质上涉及人类对音乐意义的理解是否具有普遍性的问题。本项目聚焦这一社会问题。已有研究尚未对该问题进行系统探究，一些涉及音乐意义理解的研究主要考察音乐训练效应对音乐意义理解的影响，且研究结果出现不一致。基于音高在调性音乐中的核心地位及其对音乐意义生成的关键作用，本项目从音高能力差异入手，选取3类具有不同音高知觉能力的人群（包括先天失歌症者、音乐家和普通人）为研究被试，围绕音乐意义的3个构成部分：音乐内在结构含义、音乐情绪内涵和音乐外在表现对象的意义，从行为和神经生理学角度考察音高能力差异对音乐意义加工的影响，阐明其潜在的神经机制。本项目试图通过系列研究揭示音乐意义加工的本质，回答人类对音乐意义的理解是否或在多大程度上具有普遍性的科学问题。

Music is ubiquitous in modern society, and listening music has become a living style for modern people. However, people usually complain that they can't understand music. It seems that understanding music is the privilege of musicians. This refers to the issue whether or not musical meaning understanding is universal. Previous studies haven't investigated this question systematically. Some studies have examined the impact of music training effect on musical meaning processing, however, the findings are inconsistent. It has been reported that pitch is the core element for tonal music and thus plays a critical role on musical meaning. Three groups with different pitch perception abilities including congenital amusics, musicians and nonmusicians will be therefore selected as participants. The proposed research will foucu on three parts of musical meaning including music structural meaning, music emotion, and extra - music meaning to investigate the impact of pitch perception abilities on musical meaning processing, and clarify the underlying neural mechanisms using behavioral, ERP, and fMRI techniques. The findings will not only reveal the nature of musical meaning processing, but also provide reliable evidence to clarify whether and to what extent musical meaning understanding for human being is universal.