TRANSCRANIAL DOPPLER ASSESSMENT OF CEREBRAL FLOW VELOCITY DURING PERCEPTION AND RECOGNITION OF MELODIES

The role of each cerebral hemisphere in the perception and recognition of musical information is not yet well understood. We studied cerebra l brood flow changes during a melody perception task and a melody reco gnition task. Blood flow velocity in the two middle cerebral arteries of twenty right-handed musically naif volunteers were simultaneously m easured by means of bilateral transcranial Doppler ultrasonography dur ing two minutes of passive melody listening and two minutes of a melod y recognition task. With respect to baseline values, a bilateral incre ase of flow velocity occurred in the middle cerebral arteries with a n on-significant trend for the right artery during the melody perception task. During the melody recognition task, a significant increase in f low velocity was recorded on the right side with respect to the left s ide, where a slight simultaneous decrease was found. Our data suggest that melody perception requires bilateral activation of hemispheres an d melody recognition mainly an activation of the right hemisphere. Thi s study confirms the ability of transcranial Doppler ultrasonography t o correlate artery flow dynamics with selective cerebral activation. ( C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.