This thesis investigated melodic memory and perception in patients with unilateral left (LT) or right (RT) temporal-lobe lesions and in normal control (NC) subjects. Experiment I examined learning and 24-hour retention of unfamiliar tunes and nonsense words. Both temporal-lobe groups were impaired in learning the tunes and the words. Long-term retention of these stimuli showed that subjects with a RT lobectomy were more impaired in recognizing the tunes than the words, while subjects with a LT lobectomy were more impaired in recognizing the words than the tunes. This study demonstrated the differenting roles of the right and the left temporal lobes in long-term retention of musical and verbal information, respectively. Experiment IIa and IIb investigated memory for songs (words sung to a tune). Recognition of the melodic component resulted in a deficit for both RT and LT groups, but the nature of the impairment seems to be related to the side of the lesion. Patients with LT lobectomy showed deficits in tune recognition mediated by words, but not for tunes sung without words. Patients with RT lobectomy were impaired in tune recognition, whether or not words were sung to the tunes. On the other hand, the well-known verbal memory deficit was shown after a LT lobectomy when the words actually form part of the stimulus as well as when the words are spoken. In experiment III two melodic discrimination tasks were created to test the hypothesis that the RT and the LT lobes are specialized for global and local information processing, respectively. The results showed that impairments under both experimental conditions regardless of the side of the temporal lobectomy suggest that the two temporal lobes are involved in the processing of contour and interval information.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.74266 |
| Date | January 1989 |
| Creators | Samson, Séverine |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Psychology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001067129, proquestno: AAINN63434, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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