Functional dissociations following bilateral lesions of auditory cortex

• DOI: 10.1093/brain/117.6.1283
• Publication Date: 2007-01-04T04:52:09Z
• Authors: Isabelle Peretz; Régine Kolinsky; Mark Tramo; Raymonde Labrecque; Claude Hublet; Guy Demeurisse; Sylvie Belleville
• Keywords: Melody; Auditory perception; Temporal cortex; Agnosia

We present two patients with bilateral lesions of the superior temporal cortex who manifested a number functional dissociations in auditory domain. The perception speech and environmental sounds were preserved; yet, tunes, prosody voice was impaired. As processing melodic but not rhythmic variations musical sequences selectively disturbed, deficit cannot be attributed to general impairment memory or sequential processing. These findings suggest that melody is mediated by general-purpose architecture specialized cortical subsystems residing within lesioned areas. Current taxonomies agnosia models normal music cognition are evaluated light these patients.