Journal

The Japanese journal of neuropsychology

[Vol.37 No.2 contents]
Japanese/English

Full Text of this Article
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ArticleTitle Music processing in the brain: perspectives from cases with amusia
Language J
AuthorList Masayuki Satoh
Affiliation Department of Dementia and Neuropsychology, Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology, Tokyo Metropolitan Public University Corporation
Publication Japanese Journal of Neuropsychology: 37 (2), 106-116, 2021
Received
Accepted
Abstract I and my colleagues had carried out the assessment about musical ability of two cases of amusia. The patient 1 was a woman over 70 years old. Due to the infarction of the anterior portion of bilateral temporal lobes, she showed the impairment of the chord-discrimination and the replacement of a phrase of the melody (paramelodia) while her singing. From the harmony analyses, it was suggested that we retrieve the succeeding melody based on the harmony progression of preceding phrase or for 4 bars. The patient 2 was a man over 60 years old. He developed the infarction of bilateral temporal lobes, and showed the auditory agnosia and the expressive amusia. His impairment of singing might be caused by the dissociation between the receptive and expressive system of music (conduction amusia). Several reviews of the literatures of amusia emphasized the cortical and subcortical regions of right temporal lobe as the site of lesion of the impairment of music recognition. It will be necessary the reference and the integration of the findings of amusic cases and brain activation studies.
Keywords amusia, paramelodia, conduction amusia, tonality

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