title: Music Perception in Dementia.
abstract: Despite much recent interest in music and dementia, music perception has not been widely studied across dementia syndromes using an information processing approach. Here we addressed this issue in a cohort of 30 patients representing major dementia syndromes of typical Alzheimer's disease (AD, n = 16), logopenic aphasia (LPA, an Alzheimer variant syndrome; n = 5), and progressive nonfluent aphasia (PNFA; n = 9) in relation to 19 healthy age-matched individuals. We designed a novel neuropsychological battery to assess perception of musical patterns in the dimensions of pitch and temporal information (requiring detection of notes that deviated from the established pattern based on local or global sequence features) and musical scene analysis (requiring detection of a familiar tune within polyphonic harmony). Performance on these tests was referenced to generic auditory (timbral) deviance detection and recognition of familiar tunes and adjusted for general auditory working memory performance. Relative to healthy controls, patients with AD and LPA had group-level deficits of global pitch (melody contour) processing while patients with PNFA as a group had deficits of local (interval) as well as global pitch processing. There was substantial individual variation within syndromic groups. Taking working memory performance into account, no specific deficits of musical temporal processing, timbre processing, musical scene analysis, or tune recognition were identified. The findings suggest that particular aspects of music perception such as pitch pattern analysis may open a window on the processing of information streams in major dementia syndromes. The potential selectivity of musical deficits for particular dementia syndromes and particular dimensions of processing warrants further systematic investigation.
authors: Dementia Research Centre, UCL Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
authors: Hannah L
authors: HL
authors: Golden
authors: Dementia Research Centre, UCL Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
authors: Camilla N
authors: CN
authors: Clark
authors: Dementia Research Centre, UCL Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom.|London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London, London, United Kingdom.
authors: Jennifer M
authors: JM
authors: Nicholas
authors: Dementia Research Centre, UCL Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
authors: Miriam H
authors: MH
authors: Cohen
authors: Dementia Research Centre, UCL Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
authors: Catherine F
authors: CF
authors: Slattery
authors: Dementia Research Centre, UCL Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
authors: Ross W
authors: RW
authors: Paterson
authors: Dementia Research Centre, UCL Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
authors: Alexander J M
authors: AJM
authors: Foulkes
authors: Dementia Research Centre, UCL Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
authors: Jonathan M
authors: JM
authors: Schott
authors: Dementia Research Centre, UCL Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
authors: Catherine J
authors: CJ
authors: Mummery
authors: Dementia Research Centre, UCL Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
authors: Sebastian J
authors: SJ
authors: Crutch
authors: Dementia Research Centre, UCL Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
authors: Jason D
authors: JD
authors: Warren
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001308:Auditory Perceptual Disorders / Q000209:etiology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D015331:Cohort Studies; D003704:Dementia / Q000150:complications*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009146:Music; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric
keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; auditory scene analysis; dementia; logopenic 
  aphasia; music; progressive nonfluent aphasia