Acquired amusia after a right middle cerebral artery infarction–a case study

A 62-year-old musician—MM—developed amusia after a right middle-cerebral-artery infarction. Initially, MM showed melodic deficits while discriminating pitch-related differences in melodies, musical memory problems, and impaired sensitivity to tonal structures, but normal pitch discrimination and spectral resolution thresholds, and normal cognitive and language abilities. His rhythmic processing was intact when pitch variations were removed. After 3 months, MM showed a large improvement in his sensitivity to tonality, but persistent melodic deficits and a decline in perceiving the metric structure of rhythmic sequences. We also found visual cues aided melodic processing, which is novel and beneficial for future rehabilitation practice.