Pitch as a Shared Code for Music and Speech: Behavioral and Neural Evidence From Stroke Patients

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Auditory Perception
• Speech and Music Processing

Background:

• Accurate pitch discrimination is vital for interpreting music and speech.
• The shared auditory-perceptual processing components between music and speech remain unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate pitch discrimination, musical pitch perception, and prosody perception in stroke patients.
• To identify shared neural substrates for these auditory functions.
• To examine if early white matter integrity predicts later pitch-related outcomes.

Main Methods:

• Behavioral testing of pitch discrimination, musical pitch, and prosody perception in 39 stroke patients at early and late subacute stages.
• Whole-brain white matter connectome analyses using diffusion MRI data.
• Prognostic analyses correlating early white matter integrity with later outcomes.

Main Results:

• Pitch discrimination strongly correlated with musical pitch and prosody perception across both stages.
• The 50-cent pitch discrimination threshold was the most sensitive measure.
• Overlapping neural substrates, particularly the right inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF), were identified.
• Early IFOF and uncinate fasciculus integrity predicted later pitch-related performance.

Conclusions:

• Behavioral and neural associations for pitch-based perception overlap between music and speech.
• Pitch processing is a fundamental auditory function with shared mechanisms across domains.