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Abstract:
The objective of the study is to evaluate if the rupture of
an aneurysm located on the middle cerebral artery (MCA) results in
disorders of music recognition. To this aim, 20 patients having
sustained brain surgery for the clipping of a unilateral left
(LHD), right (RHD) or bilateral (BHD) aneurysm(s) on the MCA and 20
neurologically intact control subjects (NC) were evaluated with
nine tests assessing most abilities that are involved in music
recognition. The results show that the LHD group was more impaired
than the RHD group in all three tasks involving musical long term
memory. Yet, only two patients (1 BHD and 1 RHD) could be qualified
as music agnosic, since only these patients exhibit a clear deficit
in each recognition memory task. In the melodic and the rhythmic
discrimination tasks, both LHD and RHD were impaired. However,
evidence for double dissociations between the melodic and rhythmic
tasks was obtained, confirming cerebral separability for melodic
and rhythmic abilities. Altogether, the results show that brain
surgery for the clipping of an aneurysm on the MCA results in : 1)
music recognition disorders of various functional origins in half
the patients (3 LHD, 4 RHD, 3 BHD) and 2) music agnosia in rare
cases (10 % of the sample).
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