From Newsday.com:
Can’t sing? It may not be your fault
BY JAMIE TALAN
STAFF WRITER
June 23, 2004
Can’t keep a tune? You may get to blame your brain.
People who can’t discriminate between musical tones suffer from amusia, or tone deafness, and Canadian researchers say they have identified a region in the brain they believe is responsible. They are set to deliver preliminary findings today at an international meeting in Montreal on music and the brain.
Krista Hyde and her colleagues at the University of Montreal have been scanning the brains of 20 people who’ve been tone deaf since birth, and have narrowed the hunt to the right auditory cortex, an area of the brain that processes pitch perception.
Amusia is no laughing matter, Hyde, a doctoral student, says. Music is such a major element of our culture, she said, that the condition “robs them of their experience of music. … A beautiful symphony can sound like noise.”
The researchers suspect that as much as 4 percent of the world’s population have a congenital brain abnormality that renders them tone deaf. Others can acquire amusia following head trauma or stroke.
Of 100 people who responded to ads seeking people who can’t carry a tune, Hyde said only 20 qualified for a true diagnosis of amusia - indicating many who think they’re tone deaf instead simply aren’t good vocalists.
Hyde’s post-doctoral research was designed to figure out why people had severe problems processing music despite normal intelligence, memory and language skills. Her findings, published in the latest issue of Psychological Science, suggest that a brain abnormality impairs pitch processing.
One of her study subjects is a New York language professor whose husband was also a professor - of music. “When he wanted to take her to the symphony, she became aggressive,” Hyde recalls. She said the couple are no longer married.
Robert Zattore, a professor of neuroscience at the Montreal Neurological Institute, part of McGill University in Montreal, said that the human brain has evolved so that left and right sides of the auditory cortex have different structures and functions - unlike most brain regions, which are symmetrical.
Studies by Zattore and others suggest that the left auditory cortex contains more white matter than the right, suggesting that the left evolved to handle rapid-firing human speech. The right is slower in processing information but more accurate, which may explain its involvement in pitch perception.
The McGill scientist says that his work on processing music is helping unravel the mysteries of schizophrenia. Many patients with schizophrenia complain of voices that no one else can hear. Zattore and his colleagues suspect that’s a result of a disconnect between the auditory cortex and the rest of the brain.
Harvard scientists also were to present evidence that musicians are made, not born. Gott- fried Schlaug, an associate professor of neurology, has shown that adults with more musical training have more pronounced brain changes. In a continuing study, he has scanned the brains of 100 children with a range of early music training. So far, the structure of the right auditory cortex appears similar, regardless of training. He expects to see differences emerge between the groups over time.
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.
“AMUSIA” After our session on Tuesday night, I think that Amusia would be great name. The fiddlers were playing sharp then flat all night.
MarkB
I relate music to almost everything in my life. The fax machine will beep and I’ll think, “Hey, that’s the first note to I’m Too Sexy, by Right Said Fred”! Seriously, I can’t imagine what it’s like to hear any music as just a bunch of noise. (besides Yoko Ono) 
What if we talk about plumbing, drains, clogged, faucets, fixtures, shower heads.