Intact absolute pitch ability after left temporal lobectomy

Abstract

A 17-year old pianist who possessed absolute pitch underwent an anterior left temporal lobectomy for the relief of intractable seizures. Prior to surgery he showed some fluctuation in the pattern of errors in notating single piano tones. Postoperatively he improved on this task, and one year later his performance was essentially perfect. On a short-term retention task given postoperatively he showed the expected effect of a left temporal-lobe and hippocampal lesion: he was impaired in the recall of a three-letter sequence after 18 sec with an interpolated verbal task. In contrast, retention of the names of three piano notes was excellent under the same conditions, as it is for control subjects with absolute pitch. The results are interpreted in terms of the dissociation between verbal mechanisms and those involved in the coding of pitch, and the seeming immunity of many musical abilities to the effects of left-hemisphere lesions.