Dementia Research Centre, Institute of Neurology, University College, and Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Hammersmith Hospital Campus, London, UK.
Brain. 2010 Apr;133(Pt 4):1200-13. doi: 10.1093/brain/awp345. Epub 2010 Feb 8.
Despite much recent interest in the clinical neuroscience of music processing, the cognitive organization of music as a domain of non-verbal knowledge has been little studied. Here we addressed this issue systematically in two expert musicians with clinical diagnoses of semantic dementia and Alzheimer's disease, in comparison with a control group of healthy expert musicians. In a series of neuropsychological experiments, we investigated associative knowledge of musical compositions (musical objects), musical emotions, musical instruments (musical sources) and music notation (musical symbols). These aspects of music knowledge were assessed in relation to musical perceptual abilities and extra-musical neuropsychological functions. The patient with semantic dementia showed relatively preserved recognition of musical compositions and musical symbols despite severely impaired recognition of musical emotions and musical instruments from sound. In contrast, the patient with Alzheimer's disease showed impaired recognition of compositions, with somewhat better recognition of composer and musical era, and impaired comprehension of musical symbols, but normal recognition of musical emotions and musical instruments from sound. The findings suggest that music knowledge is fractionated, and superordinate musical knowledge is relatively more robust than knowledge of particular music. We propose that music constitutes a distinct domain of non-verbal knowledge but shares certain cognitive organizational features with other brain knowledge systems. Within the domain of music knowledge, dissociable cognitive mechanisms process knowledge derived from physical sources and the knowledge of abstract musical entities.
尽管最近人们对音乐加工的临床神经科学产生了浓厚的兴趣，但音乐作为非言语知识领域的认知组织却很少被研究。在这里，我们通过对两名临床诊断为语义性痴呆和阿尔茨海默病的专业音乐家与一组健康的专业音乐家进行比较，系统地研究了这个问题。在一系列神经心理学实验中，我们研究了音乐作品（音乐对象）、音乐情感、乐器（音乐来源）和乐谱（音乐符号）的联想知识。这些音乐知识方面与音乐感知能力和非音乐神经心理学功能有关。尽管严重损害了声音识别音乐情感和乐器的能力，但语义性痴呆患者对音乐作品和乐谱的识别仍相对保留。相比之下，阿尔茨海默病患者对音乐作品的识别受损，对作曲家和音乐时代的识别稍好，对音乐符号的理解受损，但对声音识别音乐情感和乐器的能力正常。这些发现表明音乐知识是可分的，高级音乐知识比特定音乐知识更强大。我们提出音乐构成了一个独特的非言语知识领域，但与其他大脑知识系统具有某些认知组织特征。在音乐知识领域内，可分离的认知机制处理来自物理来源的知识和抽象音乐实体的知识。
