title: Affective aprosodia from a medial frontal stroke.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Whereas injury to the left hemisphere induces aphasia, injury to the right hemisphere's perisylvian region induces an impairment of emotional speech prosody (affective aprosodia). Left-sided medial frontal lesions are associated with reduced verbal fluency with relatively intact comprehension and repetition (transcortical motor aphasia), but persistent affective prosodic defects associated with right medial frontal lesions have not been described.
  
  
  METHODS
  We assessed the prosody of a man who sustained a right medial frontal cerebral infarction seven years prior.
  
  
  RESULTS
  While propositional speech expression was normal including syntactic prosody, the patient was impaired at expressing emotions using prosody. His comprehension and repetition of prosody were also impaired but less so than expression.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Right medial frontal lesions can induce an affective aprosodia that primarily impairs expression.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, University of Florida College of Medicine, Center for Neurological Studies, State of Florida Memory Disorder Clinic, and the VA RR&D Brain Rehabilitation Research Center, Gainesville, FL, USA. heilman@neurology.ufl.edu
authors.forename: Kenneth M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Heilman
authors.forename: Susan A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Leon
authors.forename: John C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Rosenbek
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D002544:Cerebral Infarction / Q000150:complications* / Q000473:pathology; D004644:Emotions; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000473:pathology; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D013064:Speech Disorders / Q000209:etiology*