Selective associative phonagnosia after right anterior temporal stroke

Obligatory and facultative brain regions for voice-identity recognition

“…Our findings support a central assumption of current voice-identity processing models ( Belin et al , 2004 ; Blank et al , 2014 b ; Perrodin et al , 2015 ; Roswandowitz et al , In press ): the posterior/mid temporal lobe is critical for voice-identity recognition and this process is relatively independent from acoustic voice feature, face-identity, and speech processing. However, hitherto, causal evidence for the involvement of the temporal lobe in such specific voice-identity recognition has been largely lacking ( Luzzi et al , 2017 b ): case studies on patients with lesions in temporal lobes reported either unimpaired voice-identity recognition ( Van Lancker et al , 1988 , 1989 ; Jiahui et al , 2017 ) or, particularly with lesions in the anterior temporal lobe, a multimodal person-recognition deficit, affecting also face and name recognition ( Gainotti et al , 2003 , 2008 ; Hailstone et al , 2010 , 2011 ; Luzzi et al , 2017 a ). A multimodal person-recognition deficit associated with temporal lobe lesions was also found in a patient group study with a similar methodological approach to ours ( Hailstone et al , 2011 ).…”

“…Phonagnosia—a selective deficit in voice-identity processing—was first described in patients with acquired brain lesions ( Assal et al , 1976 ; Van Lancker and Canter, 1982 ). In these neuropsychological case studies, voice-identity recognition deficits were independent of intact face-identity recognition skills ( Van Lancker and Canter, 1982 ; Van Lancker and Kreiman, 1987 ; Neuner and Schweinberger, 2000 ), intact musical skills ( Luzzi et al , 2017 b ), intact language skills ( Luzzi et al , 2017 b ), and intact perceptual voice-identity analysis as assessed with voice discrimination tests ( Van Lancker and Kreiman, 1987 ; Van Lancker et al , 1988 , 1989 ; Luzzi et al , 2017 b ). The findings suggest a dedicated neural substrate for voice-identity recognition not involved in other person-recognition abilities, language skills, or even the perceptual analysis of voice-identity features ( Fig.…”

“…Based on neuropsychological reports, a prime candidate area for the neural substrate for voice-identity recognition is the right inferior parietal lobe ( Van Lancker et al , 1988 , 1989 ) ( Fig. 1 B): all but one patient ( Luzzi et al , 2017 b ) with voice-identity recognition deficits, in whom lesion information was available, had lesions in the right inferior parietal lobe.…”

“…However, evidence for a critical function of the temporal lobe in selective voice-identity recognition is scarce. To date, there is only one recent report on a selective voice-identity recognition deficit in a patient with a temporal lobe lesion ( Luzzi et al , 2017 b ). In contrast, other neuropsychological studies on patients with temporal lobe lesions report either impaired multimodal person-identity recognition ( Gainotti et al , 2003 ; Hailstone et al , 2010 , 2011 ) or intact voice-identity recognition ( Van Lancker et al , 1988 , 1989 ; Jiahui et al , 2017 ).…”

“…Previous reports on acquired phonagnosia relied either on case studies ( Van Lancker et al , 1988 ; Jiahui et al , 2017 ; Luzzi et al , 2017 b ) or group studies where lesion mapping was based on overlay representations of lesions detected on CT scans ( Van Lancker et al , 1988 , 1989 ). Today, besides the advent of high spatial resolution MRI, more refined statistical analysis procedures allow for specific lesion-behaviour associations [voxel-based morphometry (VBM); Ashburner and Friston, 2000 ; voxel-based lesion symptom mapping (VLSM); Bates et al , 2003 ].…”