唱歌找不著調的人注意了！最近有一項研究結果顯示，對音樂曲調毫無感覺的“音盲”人士對音樂曲調沒有感覺是因為他們的某些腦神經元傳輸不暢。一般來說，患“音盲”的人無法辨別音樂曲調的差異，而且有很強的遺傳性。在這項研究中，研究人員通過對“音盲”和非“音盲”兩組被試者的大腦掃描發現，患“音盲”的被試者大腦中接收和制造聲音的兩個區域連接以及其中的神經元傳輸都比非“音盲”的被試者要少，有時甚至掃描不到有神經元在傳輸。如果把這兩個區域比作兩個小島，而把它們之間的神經元傳輸通道比作公路的話，那么，患“音盲”的人大腦中這條“公路”上的車流要顯得稀疏很多。研究人員表示，這一發現可能會對治療其他類型的語言障礙有所幫助。

If you're one of the unlucky people who is tone-deaf, it turns out your brain may have a wiring problem. That's what new research published Wednesday suggests.

Do your friends cover their ears when you sing along with the radio? Does the choir director ask you to lip-sync?

If you're one of the unlucky people who is tone-deaf, it turns out your brain may have a wiring problem. That's what new research published Wednesday suggests.

People who are tone-deaf can't detect differences in musical pitch but usually have normal hearing and speech. Tone-deafness runs in families, and estimates of how many people have the problem range from 4 percent to 17 percent.

In the small study done in Boston, brain scans showed there was a difference in a particular brain circuit between those who were tone-deaf and those who weren't. Among the tone-deaf, researchers discovered there were fewer connections between two areas of the brain that perceive and produce sounds.

The study's lead author, Psyche Loui, likened the connection to a highway between two islands in the brain.

In tone-deaf people, "there's less traffic on the highway," said Loui, who studies music and the brain at Harvard Medical School and is also a musician.

Loui and her colleagues took brain scans of 20 people, half of them tone-deaf. Those who were tone-deaf had fewer nerve fibers between the frontal and temporal regions of the brain, or in some cases the fibers couldn't be detected at all.

The researchers reported their findings in Wednesday's issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

"It's a new piece in our understanding of tone-deafness and the processes that are involved in the perception of pitch in general," said Nina Kraus of Northwestern University, who wasn't involved in the research.

Loui said the brain connection they examined was long known to be involved in language. "Now that we know which brain pathways to train," she said, there may be ways to help people with tone-deafness, and perhaps those with other language disorders.

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(Agencies)

Vocabulary:

lip-sync: 對口型，假唱

tone-deaf: 音盲，無法分辨音律

（英語點津 Helen 編輯）