Disturbance of rhythm sense following right hemisphere damage.

In a patient with right temporal lobe and additional right basal ganglia damage following a stroke, recognition and reproduction of simple rhythmical Gestalten were examined and found grossly undisturbed. In contrast to this undisturbed perception and production of rhythm, the patient could not tap or move rhythmically in beat with an auditory pacer such as a metronome or marching band music, yet he could do so to rhythmically presented light or touch stimuli. Thus, the impairment seems to be a previously undescribed, modality specific disturbance of auditorily paced predictive motor behaviour affecting, for example, walking, dancing, singing and speech.