[Recognition of the emotional and prosodic characteristics of voice and complex nonverbal sounds by patients with local brain lesions].

Under examination there were 69 patients with cerebral cortex pathologies of various localization. Use was made of five speech tests and three non-speech ones that required identification or comparison of the sounds. it was found that all the patients had difficulties in discerning the emotional aspect of a speech communication, these difficulties being especially great in patients with disturbances of the speech, writing and reading. Maximal difficulties in fulfilling the requirements of the tests were revealed in patients with the temporal localization of the pathological foci. It is supposed that the emotional colouring of speech is discerned owing to a joint activity of a number of cortical zones in which the temporal divisions play the leading role.