Elsevier

Brain and Language

Volume 35, Issue 1, September 1988, Pages 154-171
Brain and Language

The role of callosal connections in speech prosody

https://doi.org/10.1016/0093-934X(88)90106-XGet rights and content

Abstract

A 39-year-old right-handed woman suffered an aneurysmal hemorrhage damaging the anterior four-fifths of the corpus callosum as shown on MRI. Computeraided acoustical analyses of fundamental frequency (F0) contours and durational patterns were performed on emotive and nonemotive utterances at 4 weeks, 4 months, and 1 year postsurgery. The patient read sentences in each of five tones (happy, sad, angry, neutral, questioning) or with emphasis on certain words. She showed little F0 distinction with intended mood at 4 weeks, but her performance improved over time. This improvement in speech production was accompanied by an improvement in perceptual judgments of her intended tone by six normal listeners. F0 patterns characteristic of emphatic stress and question forms were found at all test periods, but again improved with time. Durationally, the patient showed appropriate emotive and nonemotive distinctions on most sentences. These results provide acoustic evidence that interhemispheric connections via the corpus callosum are important to proper F0 programming, especially emotive distinctions. The results suggest that the right hemisphere contributes to F0 programming but, following callosal damage, such programming can later be performed by the left hemisphere.

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    This work was supported by NIH Grant NS19632. A portion of this research was presented at the 17th Annual Clinical Aphasiology Conference in Missouri, June, 1987.

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