title: Case of singing seizure using syllable names.
abstract: We report a case of a patient with singing seizures, who was able to sing familiar songs by syllable name with no earlier practice. The patient was a 56-year-old musically naive woman who developed singing seizures when she was in her early 20s. She suddenly began singing familiar sacred songs by syllable name, even though she had never practiced the songs using a musical score or had earlier sung them by syllable name. An electroencephalogram showed bilateral low-voltage spikes that were significantly pronounced in the right temporal lobe. Technetium-99m-bicisate ethyl cysteinate dimer single photon emission computed tomography also showed hypoperfusion in the medial right temporal lobe. The right temporal lobe may be involved in singing, and there may be an automatic and unconscious analytical system of music perception that arranges each tone into its syllable name.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Mie University Graduate School of Medicine, Mie, Japan. a-shindo@clin.medic.mie-u.ac.jp
authors.forename: Akihiro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Shindo
authors.forename: Masayuki
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Satoh
authors.forename: Yuichiro
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ii
authors.forename: Shigeki
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kuzuhara
mesh_terms: D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology; D001921:Brain / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D003545:Cysteine / Q000031:analogs & derivatives / Q000378:metabolism; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008875:Middle Aged; D009146:Music; D015609:Organotechnetium Compounds / Q000378:metabolism; D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals / Q000378:metabolism; D012640:Seizures / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000503:physiopathology*; D015899:Tomography, Emission-Computed, Single-Photon
chemical_list: D015609:Organotechnetium Compounds; D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals; C059659:technetium Tc 99m bicisate; D003545:Cysteine