Neuropsychologie clinique de la perception musicale

Which is the degree of cognitive and functional independence between language and music? Since the end of the 19th century, the clinical observations in neuropsychology showed the existence of dissociations between the linguistic and the musical abilities. It is realistic to think that these two domains show common processes in their most simple expression (perception) and differences in their most complex capabilities (memory, decision…). However, clinical observations show that even the “simplest” aspects of musical perception (as perception of pitch or rhythm) can be selectively impaired after brain damages. Besides, since 1960, the experimental studies in neuropsychology show the fact that linguistic or musical perceptive tasks are underlined by different and specialized hemispheric networks. Recently, functional neuroimaging studies bring some new lights on this debate. Beyond this fundamental question, the accent is set on the great interest to use musical material to explore the cognitive functions, and to construct musical activities in clinical rehabilitation.