Hemispheric specialization for linguistic processing of sung speech.

The two hemispheres of the brain play complementary roles in song perception, with the left hemisphere specialized for processing the linguistic aspects of song and the right hemisphere specialized for the processing of melody. However, very little is known about how language and melody interact. The present study tested the hypothesis that right hemisphere linguistic processing would be facilitated by the presence of melody. In a dichotic listening paradigm, participants (8 men, 43 women) performed a linguistic task while listening to spoken or sung speech. Contrary to the hypothesis, left hemisphere specialization for linguistic processing was identical whether the sentences were spoken or sung.