Aprosody can be a feature of illnesses affecting which of the following lobes of the brain?
Exam Question Jul 2014
Temporal and occipital20%Frontal and parietal20%Occipital and parietal17%Parietal and temporal21%Frontal and temporal22%
Exam Question Jul 2014
Prosody
Prosody is defined as 'the emotional tone of language'. It is the melodious quality, the inflections in the voice that reveal the emotional aspects of speech. Prosody is affected by a variety of psychiatric and neuropsychiatric illnesses.
Aprosodias are typically caused by dysfunction in areas of the non-dominant hemisphere (in 95% of people this is the right).
Aprosodias are disorders in the ability to express (executive aprosody) or understand (receptive aprosody) the emotional overlay of speech. Aprosodias can be acquired via specific brain lesions.
Executive prosody can be tested by asking the patient to repeat a neutral sentence with different emotions (anger, fear, sadness). It is affected by lesions of the right premotor cortex or the basal ganglia.
Receptive prosody can be tested by the examiner repeating a neutral sentence with different emotions and asking the patient which emotion is being conveyed. It is affected by lesions of the posterior superior right temporal lobe.
Prosody is affected by many psychiatric illnesses, therefore abnormalities of prosody are not symptomatic of a particular disorder. Patients with severe depression, schizophrenia and those with pervasive developmental disorders often present with characteristic abnormalities of prosody. The severely depressed patient may have a monotonous, affect neutral pattern of speech which is virtually devoid of emotional content. Patients with schizophrenia may present with abnormal modulation of emphasis and volume or unusual accents. Some patients with pervasive developmental disorders - in particular autism and Asperger's disorder have characteristic speech patterns which are monotonous, robotic, or singsong in quality.
