A professional musician with progressive visuospatial concerns: a case study and review of musical alexia.

This case report presents the story of Mr. S, a professional orchestral musician with declining musical sight-reading ability, followed by progressive visuospatial and language deficits. Our novel musical assessment battery revealed deficits in music-reading (musical alexia) and music-writing (musical agraphia), with spared auditory perception and expression. Taken with neuropsychological testing, clinical history, and imaging, we conclude that his symptoms evolved from musical alexia to a multidomain, neurodegenerative process centered in the dominant inferior parietal lobe and temporoparietal junction. We suspect a primary TDP-opathy with comorbid preclinical Alzheimer's disease. Mr. S's case highlights musical symptoms as meaningful, early indicators of neurodegeneration.

Citation

Bronte Ficek-Tani, Samantha Tun, Alexander Frolov, Emily Sharp, Carolyn A Fredericks. A professional musician with progressive visuospatial concerns: a case study and review of musical alexia. Neurocase. 2024 Dec;30(6):214-225

Mesh Tags

PMID: 39655794

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