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High notes really are high

Perception of pitch and spatial orientation are linked.

The way that people talk about 'high' and 'low' notes makes it sound as though musical pitch has something to do with physical location. Now it seems there may be a reason for this: the same bit of our brain could control both our understanding of pitch and spatial orientation.

Read the story here.

Posted by Nicola Jones on June 24, 2007 06:00 PM |

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As someone who has flown light aircraft for 40 years, I have noticed that musicians often make good pilots, and that pitch discrimination ability seems to go with an ability to assemble a useful mental picture of where the airplane is in space, how well it's doing, etc. (Especially when on instruments, an airplane is flown mostly "inside your head.") The experimenters might want to look into this.

Posted by: Nicholas Reinhardt | June 25, 2007 04:44 PM

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