Musical anhedonia: Selective loss of emotional experience in listening to music

Title of study:

Musical anhedonia: Selective loss of emotional experience in listening to music.

Journal name:

Neurocase (2011), 17(5), 410-417

Abstract:

Recent case studies have suggested that emotion perception and emotional experience of music have independent cognitive processing. We report a patient who showed selective impairment of emotional experience only in listening to music, that is musical anhednia. A 71-year-old right-handed man developed an infarction in the right parietal lobe. He found himself unable to experience emotion in listening to music, even to which he had listened pleasantly before the illness. In neuropsychological assessments, his intellectual, memory, and constructional abilities were normal. Speech audiometry and recognition of environmental sounds were within normal limits. Neuromusicological assessments revealed no abnormality in the perception of elementary components of music, expression and emotion perception of music. Brain MRI identified the infarct lesion in the right inferior parietal lobule. These findings suggest that emotional experience of music could be selectively impaired without any disturbance of other musical, neuropsychological abilities. The right parietal lobe might participate in emotional experience in listening to music. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)(journal abstract)

Authors and affiliation:

Satoh, M. (1); Nakase, T. (2); Nagata, K. (2); Tomimoto, H. (3)

(1) Department of Dementia Prevention and Therapeutics, Graduate School of Medicine, Mie University, Mie, Japan

(2) Department of Neurology, Research Institute for Brain and Blood Vessels, Akita, Japan

(3) Department of Neurology, Graduate School of Medicine, Mie University, Mie, Japan

Web link:

http://remote.libproxy.wlu.ca/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/902549587?accountid=15090