Evaluation of perception of music, environmental sounds, and speech in right versus left cerebral stroke patients

Abstract

Abstract Background Stroke is a leading cause of disability and about a third of stroke survivors have aphasia. Stroke also may affect all levels of the auditory pathway and lead to hearing reception and/or perception deficits for different sound types. Aim of the work The aim of the work is to evaluate the perception of music, environmental sounds, and speech in post-stroke patients in order to determine if there is a difference in the basic auditory perceptual abilities in right versus left cerebral stroke. Subjects and methods A group of 30 healthy adults and a group of 30 right and left cerebral stroke patients with an age range from 35 to 75 years old were included. The participants were evaluated using a 10-item designed questionnaire for auditory abilities and a test of auditory perceptual/recognition skills. The questionnaire addressed some of the basic auditory skills of attention, discrimination, and recognition of environmental sounds and human voice. The test consisted of non-verbal and verbal domains. The non-verbal domain involved music recognition, discrimination, perception, performance, and environmental sound recognition tasks. While the verbal domain included; recognition of the sound related to speech stimuli and syllable/word recognition tasks. Results Better significant scores in right versus left stroke patients regarding questionnaire results for attention to sound sources either near or fear (p value < 0.001) and discriminating prosodic intonation of statement or interrogation (p value =  < 0.001). There was no significant difference between the right cerebral stroke group and the left cerebral stroke group regarding the score of music perception and music performance tasks of the non-verbal domain of the auditory perceptual/recognition skills assessment. Better significant scores were found in the right cerebral stroke patients than the left cerebral stroke patients regarding the scores of both the non-verbal and verbal domains of the auditory perceptual/recognition skills assessment. Conclusion Stroke of both right and left cerebral hemispheres has a specific negative effect on some aspects of perception of music, environmental sounds, and speech that need to be addressed in both evaluation protocols and rehabilitation programs.