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Abstract:
Perception of speech intonation and rhythm (speech prosody)
can be affected by abnormalities or damage in the central nervous
system, even though peripheral hearing mechanisms are intact.
Systematic assessment of prosodic perception in cases of
neurological abnormality can help characterize deficits and can aid
in determining the neural underpinnings of prosodic abilities. In
addition, comparable tests of prosodic and musical perception can
help determine the cognitive relationship of prosodic processing to
the processing of pitch and rhythmic patterns in music. We present
a new test of prosodic and musical perception which relies on
same-different discrimination of sentence pairs that differ in
linguistic prosody (either in intonation or rhythm), and
same-different discrimination of musical phrases derived from the
prosody of the sentence pairs. Data from two amusic subjects will
be presented, showing that in these individuals, musical and
prosodic perception were disrupted to a similar degree. Brain
regions implicated in prosodic and musical processing will be
discussed.
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