A new study from researchers at Beth Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School suggests that tone-deafness may be the result of a missing neural connection. By using a brain imaging technique that allows them to examine the links between the right temporal and frontal lobes, the scientists compared the neural connectivity of 10 tone-deaf subjects against 10 control participants. They found that, in the tone-deaf subjects, there was less connectivity of the arcuate fasciculus (AF), a white matter tract of fiber that serves as a “highway” between the temporal and front brain regions, and is known to be involved in linking language, music and vocal production.