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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Tim GriffithsORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2020 The AuthorsWe investigated auditory processing in a young patient who experienced a single embolus causing an infarct in the right middle cerebral artery territory. This led to damage to auditory cortex including planum temporale that spared medial Heschl's gyrus, and included damage to the posterior insula and inferior parietal lobule. She reported chronic difficulties with segregating speech from noise and segregating elements of music. Clinical tests showed no evidence for abnormal cochlear function. Follow-up tests confirmed difficulties with auditory segregation in her left ear that spanned multiple domains, including words-in-noise and music streaming. Testing with a stochastic figure-ground task—a way of estimating generic acoustic foreground and background segregation—demonstrated that this was also abnormal. This is the first demonstration of an acquired deficit in the segregation of complex acoustic patterns due to cortical damage, which we argue is a causal explanation for the symptomatic deficits in the segregation of speech and music. These symptoms are analogous to the visual symptom of simultaneous agnosia. Consistent with functional imaging studies on normal listeners, the work implicates non-primary auditory cortex. Further, the work demonstrates a (partial) lateralisation of the necessary anatomical substrate for segregation that has not been previously highlighted.
Author(s): Holmes E, Utoomprurkporn N, Hoskote C, Warren JD, Bamiou D-E, Griffiths TD
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Cortex
Year: 2021
Volume: 135
Pages: 92-107
Print publication date: 01/02/2021
Online publication date: 26/11/2020
Acceptance date: 22/10/2020
Date deposited: 27/10/2023
ISSN (print): 0010-9452
ISSN (electronic): 1973-8102
Publisher: Elsevier
URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2020.10.023
DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2020.10.023
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