title: Classifying song and speech: effects of focal temporal lesions and musical disorder.
abstract: Song and speech represent two auditory categories the brain usually classifies fairly easily. Functionally, this classification ability may depend to a great extent on characteristic features of pitch patterns present in song melody and speech prosody. Anatomically, the temporal lobe (TL) has been discussed as playing a prominent role in the processing of both. Here we tested individuals with congenital amusia and patients with unilateral left and right TL lesions in their ability to categorize song and speech. In a forced-choice paradigm, specifically designed auditory stimuli representing sung, spoken and "ambiguous" stimuli (being perceived as "halfway between" song and speech), had to be classified as either "song" or "speech". Congenital amusics and TL patients, contrary to controls, exhibited a surprising bias to classifying the ambiguous stimuli as "song" despite their apparent deficit to correctly process features typical for song. This response bias possibly reflects a strategy where, based on available context information (here: forced choice for either speech or song), classification of non-processable items may be achieved through elimination of processable classes. This speech-based strategy masks the pitch processing deficit in congenital amusics and TL lesion patients.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Neuropsychology , Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences , Leipzig , Germany.|b Music Department , Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics , Frankfurt , Germany.|c Institute of Music , University of Kassel , Kassel , Germany.
authors.forename: Julia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Merrill
authors.affiliation: a Department of Neuropsychology , Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences , Leipzig , Germany.|d Institute of Musicians' Medicine , Dresden University of Music , Dresden , Germany.
authors.forename: Marc
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bangert
authors.affiliation: a Department of Neuropsychology , Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences , Leipzig , Germany.|e Otto Hahn Group "Neural Bases of Intonation in Speech and Music" , Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences , Leipzig , Germany.
authors.forename: Daniela
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Sammler
authors.affiliation: a Department of Neuropsychology , Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences , Leipzig , Germany.
authors.forename: Angela D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Friederici
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D001308:Auditory Perceptual Disorders / Q000150:complications* / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D001930:Brain Injuries / Q000150:complications* / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000473:pathology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009146:Music; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000473:pathology*
keywords: Song; amusia; lesion; speech; temporal lobe