ABSTRACT
Much of the recent emphasis on prosody (the melody and rhythm of speech) and its disorders
(dysprosody) has been on cognitive-affective functions attributed to cortical areas
of the right cerebral hemisphere, with little further behavioral or neuroanatomical
specification. This focus is inappropriately narrow both from the perspectives of
neuropathogenesis and neurobehavioral phenomenology, and it is based on a limited
view of prosody. Current models of brain organization for prosody propose lateralized
representation based on functional (affective vs. linguistic) or featural (timing
vs. pitch) properties of prosodic material. However, a role for subcortical structures
in prosody is being increasingly described, and prosodic functions are now known to
span a broad range in communication. In this article we describe normal prosody and
present an overview of neurobehavioral disorders associated with acquired adult dysprosody.
From these considerations we propose a neurobehavior-based approach to a more effective
study of prosodic disturbance, and eventually, to better insight into normal prosody.
KEYWORDS
Prosody - basal ganglia - dysprosody - speech - affect
