
Valproate reopens critical-period learning of absolute pitch (2013) - dr_dshiv
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3848041/
======
sirwitti
> ...it can only be acquired early in life.

As a musicologist, musician and someone who acquired some level of absolute
pitch at ~14 years, I have to disagree.

Anecdata:

Musicians distinguish between acquired and given/natural absolute pitch and
additionally between active and passive AP. Naming a note and
producing/singing one are very different skills.

In my personal experience absolute pitch is a spectrum of several skills. For
example:

\- I can reliably name (single) notes played on a piano or similar instruments

\- Most times I cannot name the root note of complex chords

\- I cannot reliably name notes played by wind instruments

\- If I can sing a note in my lowest register I can name most notes reliably

Just for completeness:

Musically speaking, absolute pitch is not a particularly useful skill and can
be very limiting/painful for people.

------
powersnail
I read the paper and have doubts on the assessment of absolute pitch.

> Participants heard one synthesized piano tone per trial, for a total of 18
> trials, in a semi-randomized order, the only constraint being that
> successive tones were separated by an interval greater than one octave. The
> tones were 500 ms in duration and interleaved by 3750 ms of silence, and
> were identical to the stimuli used during training

Only the first stimuli is a test of absolute pitch. Afterwards, relative pitch
can easily help.

There is no measure (that I could see) that prevents the subjects from simply
memorizing the feeling of hearing a tune because they had just gone through
heavy training.

For instance, I don't have absolute pitch. But because I tune a violin daily,
I can remember what A4 sound like, and deduce what other notes sound like
based on that. People with absolute pitch doesn't have to do that.

In addition, testing with 12 notes is way too easy.

So, I would say "Valproate" improves the effect of ear-training, instead of
saying the subjects really developed AP.

~~~
cel1ne
I am the same, I learned it using a piano.

The question is: If you can remember what C1 or whatever sounds like and then
deduce from that, is it not just a way of more learning to be able to remember
the other ones too?

Is there really a fundamental, functional difference between absolute pitch
and "normal" hearing?

~~~
powersnail
> is it not just a way of more learning to be able to remember the other ones
> too?

Yes, but that will take a long time and much dedication, and I don't know
anybody interested in trying to remember many notes. There is also the risk
that the more notes you try to memorize, the less reliable it gets. It's a lot
more practical to just remember a few anchor notes and put the effort into
training relative pitch.

For the purpose of performing music (or any practical activity), I'd say a
good relatively pitch and a good memory of a few anchor notes, is as useful as
absolute pitch. Functionally, AP isn't much more valuable.

But I do think, based on observation, that there is something fundamentally
different with AP. It's like they hear sounds very differently, and their
brain has a special mapping of frequency that I don't have.

They recognize very subtle deviations in frequency. I have had a person tell
me "It's too sharp" when I was only off by 3 cents according to the tuner.

They don't make mistakes and they are fast, almost naming the pitch as soon as
they hear it. It's effortless, precise, and accurate.

~~~
cel1ne
> They recognize very subtle deviations in frequency. I have had a person tell
> me "It's too sharp" when I was only off by 3 cents according to the tuner.

Ok, but THAT I have. I don't have absolute pitch, but I was always able to
tune my cello more precisely than my teacher. (and other instruments too, not
limited to one person)

~~~
jacquesm
Once a single string is tuned it is all relative from that one, so I can
totally see how that would be the case. If you are a good listener then you
can tell the beats until they are very close indeed.

Another trick: tune then relative to the _first_ string tuned, not
incrementally from one tuned string to the next. That way you end up much
closer to the ideal.

------
elric
If you've never encountered anyone with absolute pitch, the experience is much
like colour vision. When (non colour-blind) people look at something, they can
_immediately_ say "green", "red", "purple", whatever. There is no lag
whatsoever. Same with people with absolute pitch. Play a note, and they can
tell you its name without lag.

~~~
cma
How is it related to colorblindness? For most types of colorblindness relative
comparisons are affected too. And for non colorblind people, all kinds of
context in an image can change perception of color, similar to relative pitch
(blue/black white/gold dress anyone?).

------
bionhoward
Wow, if epigenetic drugs could reactivate the critical period, it could be
huge for language learning, why isn’t this popular knowledge? If it’s from
2013, are there follow up studies which refute this?

This would make VPA a major nootropic

~~~
reify_null
VPA does have some side-effects, possibly depending on the person, which might
conflict with it being used as a nootropic. For me it reduces ability to
concentrate and makes moods less intense. The latter is expected behavior for
BP treatment, but not what most people would like to trade for, what I would
call, marginal benefits in comparison. There's a whole range of other side
effects, some of which are pretty bad.

------
TedDoesntTalk
> Absolute pitch, the ability to identify or produce the pitch of a sound
> without a reference point, has a critical period, i.e., it can only be
> acquired early in life.

From an evolutionary perspective, what could possibly be the reason for this?

~~~
klodolph
Infants can distinguish nearly any sound in any language, but not all sounds
are important. They lose the ability to distinguish sounds that they don't
need to distinguish. The experiment to figure this out is pretty interesting.

A native English speaker has no problem distinguishing /θ/ as in "this" from
/s/ as in "sis", but not very many languages need you to make this
distinction, so people who learn English later in life have a very hard time
with it.

Likewise, English speakers can't tell the difference between long and short
vowels, or long and short consonants. That's because there are no long and
short vowels or consonants in English--the distinction doesn't matter. But
you'd have a hard time learning Finnish or Japanese without it.

And then there are the weird cases, like how in English we have rules for
aspirating and voicing /t/ and /k/. If you speak Mandarin then you might pick
out /t/ as if it were /d/, but only in certain positions. So "stop" might
sound like "sdop", but "top" sounds like "top".

~~~
robocat
> That's because there are no long and short vowels or consonants in English--
> the distinction doesn't matter.

English has the distinction for vowels and it does matter. “can’t” and “cunt”
have the same vowel sound in some accents, but “can’t” needs a long vowel
sound while “cunt” needs a short vowel sound. Native English speakers speak
those those two words quite distinctly.

Lose/loose is another pair (confusingly “lose“ has a long vowel sound and
“loose” has a short vowel sound.)

Moon needs a long vowel sound to sound right. I am sure you can think of other
examples.

~~~
klodolph
You're right, that in some dialects it is different. But to most English
dialects, "can't" and "cunt" have completely different vowels, and the length
isn't distinguished. "Lose" and "loose" are also distinguished by the voicing,
"lose" ends with /z/ and "loose" ends with /s/. Maybe not all dialects.

------
Hoasi
> Absolute pitch, the ability to identify or produce the pitch of a sound
> without a reference point, has a critical period, i.e., it can only be
> acquired early in life.

It is also said to wane with age. If it is true, there you'd have a cure.

------
NiceWayToDoIT
Can this help learning languages, recognising/memorising sounds?

Would it be helpful with the accent, as babies till young age create frequency
statistic of sounds and that is the reason why it sounds so strange when we
speaking non native language?

------
jdc
Doesn't look like they had enough test subjects to suggest anything other than
another direction for future research.

------
jimhefferon
What is known about adult aquisition of relative pitch? (Asking ... for a
friend.)

~~~
dzdt
From the article: " there are no known cases of an adult successfully
acquiring it (Brady, 1970; Ward and Burns, 1999; Levitin and Rogers, 2005). "

Edit: Oh, sorry, that was for _perfect_ pitch. You asked for _relative_ pitch,
which was I guess a joke?

Or maybe it was a question of can someone learn to accurately identify musical
intervals who does not have perfect pitch?

~~~
labelbias
I'm also interested in this. How hard would it be to remember 440Hz and then
just go up in your head, searching with octaves and then going up and down
when close?

