Yamadori, Osumi, Masuhara, and Okubo (1977)
YAMADORI, A., Y. Osumi, S. Masuhara, and M. Okubo. “Preservation of Singing in Broca’s Aphasia.” Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry 40 (1977): 221-24.
Prompted by contemporary studies, including Gordon and Bogen 1974, which indicated a dissociation between speaking and singing abilities, and a good deal of contradictory data in older articles, which correlated aphasia with vocal motor amusias, these authors chose to conduct a systematic study of singing abilities in patients with Broca’s aphasia, and a corresponding critical review of the old literature on amusia. They found that 21 out of 24 Broca’s aphasics in their study retained the ability to sing with good melodic production. Fully half of those studied also exhibited good text words during such singing. This lead the authors to speculate that the right hemisphere is dominant for singing. They note, however, that good melodic rendering does not necessarily lead to good text rendering. The significance of this finding is left for further inquiry.
