Special Cases
A seventy-four year old man named "M" had a special case of auditory agnosia. "M" suffered from, "unilateral left posterior temporal and parietal damage", (Saygin, Leech, & Dick, 2010, p. 107) including Wernicke's Area. These areas of the brain are associated with language processing. He had a stroke when he was 62 and went through intensive speech therapy for twelve weeks to help him recover. He was able to regain his language capacity, but when tested at age 74, he had great difficulty in recognizing non-verbal environmental sounds. He did not have either verbal comprehension deficits nor peripheral hearing problems (p. 107). His condition was very rare because auditory agnosia for nonverbal sounds is usually associated with the right side of the brain. "M" was able to identify familiar Christmas songs and some animal sounds. When he heard music, he couldn't distinguish individual instruments or voices, but he knew it was music. fMRI scans show that after the stroke, his brain re-wired itself through neuronal compensation to account for the damage.
Read more about this topic: Auditory Agnosia
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