Aprosodia

Aprosodia is a neurological condition characterized by the inability of a person to properly convey or interpret emotional prosody. Prosody in language refers to the ranges of rhythm, pitch, stress, intonation, etc. These neurological deficits can be the result of damage of some form to the non-dominant hemisphere areas of language production. The prevalence of aprosodias in individuals is currently unknown, as testing for aprosodia secondary to other brain injury is only a recent occurrence.

Types

Productive

Motor aprosodia is characterised by the physical inability of a patient to produce or imitate emotional indicators, with vocal inflection (volume and pitch changes) and facial gesturing being the most frequently impaired functions and with damage to the motor area of the brain being the most frequent cause of impairment. Persons exhibiting only a motor aprosodia are able to understand the affective aspects of others' spoken communication but are physically unable to respond in kind.

Expressive aprosodia occurs when cognitive limitations rather than (or in addition to) motor-skill limitations render an individual unable to properly produce cues reflecting an intended emotional message.

Receptive

Receptive aprosodia can result from impairment at one or more sensory and/or cognitive levels ranging from hearing (signal acquisition) to auditory processing (signal isolation) to emotional comprehension (signal interpretation). For example, the first two difficulties impair an individual's ability to observe and discern changes in stress and intonation, whereas the third impairs an individual's ability to assess the significance of those stress and intonation changes that he or she correctly observes and discerns; impairment of the third type correlates significantly with expressive aprosodia.

Causes

Localized brain damage

One cause of aprosodia is trauma to one of several specific areas of the brain, resulting in the inability to properly process or convey

emotional cues.