Disruption of prosody after frontal lobe seizures in the non-dominant hemisphere

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Abstract
The perception and production of linguistic and affective prosody at the word, phrase, and sentence levels were examined to delineate the nature of a prosodic deficit evident in a 20-year-old female with a history of seizures in the non-dominant frontal lobe. Acoustic–perceptual analysis of conversational and elicited speech revealed that both perception and production of affective and linguistic prosody were impaired. Acoustic analysis further indicated that timing and intensity were impaired, whereas fundamental frequency (F 0) was relatively spared. Her prosodic profile indicated that disruption of F 0 in longer and more complex prosodic units was secondary to an underlying timing deficit. Findings are interpreted to support the view that prosody is a multifaceted process that is not adequately described by current models of hemispheric specialization for prosody. In addition, findings are brought to bear on issues concerning language and epilepsy, as well as psycholinguistic models of language production.