Pan Chun-Liang, Kuo Meng-Fai, Hsieh Sung-Tsang
Department of Neurology, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan.
Neurology. 2004 Dec 28;63(12):2387-9. doi: 10.1212/01.wnl.0000148592.92484.a9.
The authors describe a patient with auditory agnosia caused by a tectal germinoma. Despite having normal audiometric tests, the patient failed to recognize words and musical characters. On head MRI, the inferior colliculi were infiltrated by tumor. Neuropsychological tests revealed severe impairment in recognition of environmental sounds and words, defective musical perception, and stop consonant-vowel discrimination. Inferior colliculus may play a role in the analysis of sound properties.
