Cortex
Volume 41, Issue 1 , Pages 77-83, 2005

A Case of Amusia Caused by the Infarction of Anterior Portion of Bilateral Temporal Lobes

  • Masayuki Satoh

      Affiliations

    • Department of Neurology, Mie University School of Medicine
    • Department of Neurology, Japanese Red Cross Medical Center
    • Corresponding Author InformationM. Satoh, Department of Neurology, Mie University School of Medicine, 2-174 Edobashi, Tsu, Mie-ken, 514-8507 Japan
    • ,
  • Katsuhiko Takeda

      Affiliations

    • Department of Neurology, Japanese Red Cross Medical Center
    • ,
  • Yasuo Murakami

      Affiliations

    • Department of Neurology, Jikei Medical University
    • ,
  • Kenji Onouchi

      Affiliations

    • Department of Neurology, Japanese Red Cross Medical Center
    • Department of Neurology, Jikei Medical University
    • ,
  • Kiyoharu Inoue

      Affiliations

    • Department of Neurology, Jikei Medical University
    • ,
  • Shigeki Kuzuhara

      Affiliations

    • Department of Neurology, Mie University School of Medicine

Received 4 March 2002; received in revised form 1 February 2003 and 4 April 2003; accepted 28 April 2003.

Abstract 

It remains an unsettled question which brain regions participate in music perception. During singing a familiar song, the retrieval from long-term memory is necessary, but the mechanism of that retrieval is still unclear. We carried out a detailed examination of musical ability in a patient with amusia and control subjects and identified the lesion sites of our patient using MRI. Compared with controls, the patient manifested the following impairments in music perception: (i) the recognition and discrimination of familiar melodies; (ii) the discrimination of unfamiliar phrases; (iii) the discrimination of isolated chords. During singing familiar nursery songs, the patient showed the replacement of one phrase of the melody. In MRI, the patient had old infarction in the anterior portion of the temporal lobes bilaterally. In conclusion, the anterior temporal lobes participate in the perception and expression of music. During singing, the song is retrieved from long-term memory by a unit of one phrase. The dysfunction of that retrieval caused the replacement of the succeeding phrases of the original with the wrong tune, and we named this phenomenon paramelodia.

Key Words:  music processing , amusia , temporal lobe , paramelodia

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PII: S0010-9452(08)70180-1

doi:10.1016/S0010-9452(08)70180-1

Cortex
Volume 41, Issue 1 , Pages 77-83, 2005

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