title: A case of amusia caused by the infarction of anterior portion of bilateral temporal lobes.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Mie University School of Medicine, Japan. bruckner@clin.medic.mie-u.ac.jp
authors.forename: Masayuki
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Satoh
authors.forename: Katsuhiko
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Takeda
authors.forename: Yasuo
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Murakami
authors.forename: Kenji
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Onouchi
authors.forename: Kiyoharu
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Inoue
authors.forename: Shigeki
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kuzuhara
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000377:Agnosia / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001925:Brain Damage, Chronic / Q000150:complications / Q000503:physiopathology; D002544:Cerebral Infarction / Q000150:complications* / Q000503:physiopathology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009146:Music; D010897:Pitch Discrimination / Q000502:physiology*; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology / Q000503:physiopathology*