FUNCTIONAL DISSOCIATIONS FOLLOWING BILATERAL LESIONS OF AUDITORY-CORTEX

We present true patients with bilateral lesions of the superior tempor al cortex who manifested a number of functional dissociations in the a uditory domain. The perception of speech and environmental sounds were preserved; yet, the perception of times, prosody and voice was impair ed. As the processing of melodic but not rhythmic variations in musica l sequences was selectively disturbed, the deficit cannot be attribute d to a general impairment in auditory memory or sequential processing. These findings suggest that melody processing is not mediated by a ge neral-purpose auditory architecture bur by specialized cortical subsys tems residing within the lesioned areas. Current taxonomies of auditor y agnosia and models of normal music cognition are evaluated in light of the functional dissociations manifested by these patients.