Auditory agnosia with relative sparing of speech perception

We report a case of auditory agnosia in which the initial clinical picture began with generalized auditory agnosia for verbal and non verbal sounds, but rapidly changed to a selective auditory agnosia confined to the perception of non verbal sounds. CT scanning and MRI did not demonstrate cortical or subcortical damage, except for bilateral ventricular enlargement. The patient was submitted to audiological investigations including physical and psychoacoustic studies. Deficits were revealed during the decay and loudness discrimination test, but no temporal auditory acuity deficit was observed. The results of these studies are discussed in relation to the clinical picture. Also the dissociation between verbal perception and non verbal perception is discussed.