As a geneticist, Jane Gitschier, PhD, is interested in teasing out the relative contributions of genes and environment on behavior. For more than a decade, she and former UCSF colleague Nelson Freimer, PhD, now at UCLA, have been exploring this question by studying the capacity that some people have for “perfect pitch,” the ability to instantly and precisely identify a musical note.

In 1998, the UCSF team reported results of a survey study of 612 professional and student musicians nationwide in the American Journal for Human Genetics. In that study, the researchers reported that 40 percent of those who began formal musical training by age four reported developing perfect pitch. In contrast, only four percent of those who began training after age nine did. The decline in between was remarkably steady.

Two years later, the researchers found that musicians with perfect pitch were four times more likely to report a family member with perfect pitch than those without it. Forty eight percent of those with perfect pitch said they had a first degree relative with the skill, while only 14 percent of those without perfect pitch did…

Source: UCSF Today, CA
http://pub.ucsf.edu/today/cache/feature/200708291.html