Autistic traits, resting-state connectivity, and absolute pitch in professional musicians: shared and distinct neural features.
T Wenhart, R A I Bethlehem, S Baron-Cohen and 1 others
PMID 31073395WHAT IT FOUND
Professional musicians with absolute pitch reported more autistic traits and showed some different resting brain activity patterns, but not all brain measures differed.
This is not evidence for therapy.
Key findings
01Musicians with absolute pitch had higher autistic trait scores than musicians with relative pitch.
02Absolute pitch musicians showed higher average path length in the delta band during eyes open and eyes closed resting states.
03Autistic traits did not mediate the relation between absolute pitch performance and brain network measures.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The study compared professional musicians, not patients, and measured autistic traits rather than diagnosed autism, so it does not tell therapists how to assess or treat anyone. The sample was modest, with 31 AP musicians and 33 RP musicians, and one RP participant was excluded from EEG analysis. Group assignment relied on pitch-naming cutoffs and a lab pitch adjustment test, and the paper notes there is no consensus cutoff for absolute pitch. EEG network findings were selective across frequency bands, eyes-open versus eyes-closed, and connection densities, and the authors did not use standard false discovery rate correction. The researchers did not use source-localised EEG, so brain-region interpretations are speculative. The study is cross-sectional, so it cannot show that absolute pitch causes autistic traits or brain differences.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read higher autistic traits as evidence that absolute pitch causes autism or that musicians need clinical assessment. The study compared professional musicians, not patients, and did not test treatment outcomes.