In 2012 cand. musicae Anders Dohn defended his PhD thesis on perfect pitch : Behavioral and neural correlates of absolute pitch ability. The Ph.d.-project was carried through in a cooperation between Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus, Faculty of Health Sciences, Aarhus University and Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Aarhus University Hospital.
Absolute Pitch is an extremely rare skill that few musicians possess and which enables them to identify tones without reference. Typically this ability early is developed in childhood, provided that music performance is initiated at an early stage.
In this PhD project , the phenomenon has been studied in several ways. Dohns research suggests that active music performance has an impact on the precision of the absolute pitch and that people with perfect pitch have a thicker cortex in certain areas of the brain than musicians without perfect pitch. Moreover, it seems that perfect pitch is associated with some particular personality traits also seen in people with autism.
These findings may provide a better understanding of musical ability and the rare phenomenon: perfect pitch.
Read English summary Dohn_phd_summary_EN
Links to Anders Dohn’s articles
Musical Activity Tunes up Absolute Pitch Ability