Related Experiment Videos
Affective aprosodia from a medial frontal stroke
Kenneth M Heilman1, Susan A Leon, John C Rosenbek
1Department of Neurology, University of Florida College of Medicine, Center for Neurological Studies, State of Florida Memory Disorder Clinic, and the VA RR&D Brain Rehabilitation Research Center, Gainesville, FL, USA. heilman@neurology.ufl.edu
Background And Objectives:
Whereas injury to the left hemisphere induces aphasia, injury to the right hemisphere's perisylvian region induces an impairment of emotional speech prosody (affective aprosodia). Left-sided medial frontal lesions are associated with reduced verbal fluency with relatively intact comprehension and repetition (transcortical motor aphasia), but persistent affective prosodic defects associated with right medial frontal lesions have not been described.
Methods:
We assessed the prosody of a man who sustained a right medial frontal cerebral infarction seven years prior.
Results:
While propositional speech expression was normal including syntactic prosody, the patient was impaired at expressing emotions using prosody. His comprehension and repetition of prosody were also impaired but less so than expression.
Conclusions:
Right medial frontal lesions can induce an affective aprosodia that primarily impairs expression.