絕對音感，是能夠在沒有基準音的提示之下聽出音的固定唱名的能力。本文從認知心理學的觀點重訪絕對音感的四大假說（遺傳、銘印、學習、反學習），並根據近年大腦造影的數據，提出「絕對音感╱相對音感」與「語意聯結╱空間能力」的可能關聯。由於具相對音感者在聽旋律音程時，視覺皮質區的活化區域比具絕對音感者來得廣（Zartorre et al., PNAS 95:3172-77, 1998），因此相對音感的認知可能動用到該處空間處理的神經迴路。在每個人的大腦中，絕對音高資訊登錄於初級聽覺皮質區，具絕對音感者可能在聽覺聯合皮質區保有特殊的神經迴路，能將低階的、內隱的絕對音高資訊保留到高階的音感處理中，使之成為外顯的資訊。

Ma Shui-long in 1989 completed a master piece of chamber work titled “Idea and Image” for hsiao and four cellos. Quoting from the poet Wang Wei of the Tang Dynasty who once said “there is a painting in poem, and a poem in painting”, he seeks for a long time in his inside world a creation of “painting in music, and music in painting” which is reflected in this work. This can be described as a combination of music and painting. In this work, it can be seen that the composer uses musical movement to develop a unique spatial circumstance and subtlely changing sornority. At the same time, “Idea and Image” uses the non-traditional performing techniques and possesses a special structure derived from the oriental culture. These very personal creative techniques and presentation manners form the discussion theme in this dissertation.The thinking direction of this dissertation focuses on the logical analysis and research mainly through the study of the texture, pitch and structure. The research method starts from the study of texture and pitch. From the preliminary findings, it makes further investigation of the sections of “Idea and Image” in terms of vertical structure and horizontal progression. This leads to a better understanding of the external unified structure in terms of organic planning and internal logic of the entire piece, hence attempting complete review of the interaction of the micro and macro perspectives of the work.

Absolute pitch is the ability to identify, by the name of the musical note, the pitch of any sound without reference to another sound. This paper revisits four hypotheses of absolute pitch (heredity, imprinting, learning, and unlearning), indicating probable relationships between “absolute pitch / relative pitch” and “semantic association / spatial ability” on the basis of recent data of brain imaging. The fact that relative pitch possessors show more activated clusters in visual cortex than absolute pitch possessors during melodic interval listening (Zartorre et al., PNAS 95:3172-77, 1998) suggests the involvement of the neural circuit for spatial processing in relative pitch cognition. In everyone’s brain the information of absolute pitch is encoded in primary auditory cortex. Absolute pitch possessors might have special neural circuits in auditory association cortex, which are able to preserve the lower-level, implicit information of absolute pitch at higher levels of tonal processing, thereby making it explicit.