Arcuate Fasiculus Case Study

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Introduction
Do people cringe when you sing? Researchers have found out that at least 10 per cent of the population may suffer from amusia, which is a technical term for tone deafness. People who suffer from tone deafness have perfect hearing ability in music. However the difference in them is how they perceive music pitches. Their difficulties lie in their inabilities to differentiate between music notes.
This report serves to investigate a brain structure Arcuate Fasciculus and its relationship with tone deafness.

Arcuate fasciculus
Arcuate Fasiculus (AF) is a bundle of axons that forms part of the Superior Longitudinal Fasiculus. (Refer to Appendix 1). It bidirectionally connects caudal temporal cortex and inferior parietal cortex to locations in the frontal lobe (carlson, 2012; catani, 2008) …show more content…

This neural highway is known to be involved in linking music and language perception for vocal projection. Evidence for the role of AF in language use is represented by conduction aphasia, caused by damage to the inferior parietal lobule that extends into the subcortical white matter and damages the AF. Although AF is known to be involved in language, its roles in non-linguistic functions have not been explored.

Research have also shown that AF is also link to tone deafness. According to a study in the August 19 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, nerve fibres that connect perception and motor regions of the brain are disconnected in people with tone deafness. In the next section two major studies done would be described to examine the breakthrough in the relationship between AF and tone