Perception of music and speech prosody after traumatic brain injury
Objective: Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is frequently associated with a loss in the ability to understand emotions in speech, but musical skills have never been directly investigated. The present study aimed to evaluate the ability to process music and understand emotional and linguistic prosody (e.g., distinguishing between question and statement) in patients after severe TBI, and how these three skills are associated in clinical individual presentations. Method: Thirty-six patients and thirty-one healthy control participants underwent a set of musical and prosodic tests.Results: Forty-two percent of the patients were impaired in the musical pitch discrimination test, fifty-one percent were impaired in the rhythmic test and eighty-four percent were impaired in at least one of the four prosodic tests. Scores were significantly correlated to each other across tasks. At the group-level, performance of patients was significantly lower than those of matched controls in discriminating emotions and linguistic intonation in voice. Conclusions: This study shows for the first time the high prevalence of musical deficits after TBI. It also reveals strong associations between prosodic and musical impairments, and between linguistic and emotional prosody impairments.