Journal of Neurological Sciences 149 (1997) 57–61 Transcranial doppler assessment of cerebral flow velocity during perception and recognition of melodies. a b, a b a,b * Maria Matteis , Mauro Silvestrini , Elio Troisi , Letizia M. Cupini , Carlo Caltagirone a IRCCS S. Lucia, Via Ardeatina 306, 00179 Rome Italy b Clinic of Neurology, ‘‘ Tor Vergata’’ University of Rome, S. Eugenio University Hospital, P . le dell’ Umanesimo 10, 00144 Rome Italy Received 25 April 1996; revised 21 October 1996; accepted 10 January 1997 Abstract The role of each cerebral hemisphere in the perception and recognition of musical information is not yet well understood. We studied cerebral blood flow changes during a melody perception task and a melody recognition task. Blood flow velocity in the two middle cerebral arteries of twenty right-handed musically naif volunteers were simultaneously measured by means of bilateral transcranial Doppler ultrasonography during two minutes of passive melody listening and two minutes of a melody recognition task. With respect to baseline values, a bilateral increase of flow velocity occurred in the middle cerebral arteries with a non-significant trend for the right artery during the melody perception task. During the melody recognition task, a significant increase in flow velocity was recorded on the right side with respect to the left side, where a slight simultaneous decrease was found. Our data suggest that melody perception requires bilateral activation of hemispheres and melody recognition mainly an activation of the right hemisphere. This study confirms the ability of transcranial Doppler ultrasonography to correlate artery flow dynamics with selective cerebral activation.  1997 Elsevier Science B.V. Keywords: Transcranial Doppler ultrasonography; Melody perception; Melody recognition; Hemispheric dominance 1. Introduction due to the availability of new instruments able to make simultaneous bilateral recordings. The relevant parameter Transcranial Doppler ultrasonography (TCD) allows for for functional studies is the change in blood flow velocity the measurements of cerebral blood flow (CBF) velocity in that occurs when there is a change from resting state to a the basal cerebral arteries. Changes in flow velocity can be state of cognitive activity. The question of whether func- taken as proportional changes in the flow volume of the tional hemispheric dominance or functional asymmetry cerebral area supplied by the respective artery and thus can between cerebral hemispheres for cognitive activities can provide information about cerebral activation (Aaslid et al., be demonstrated with the help of the TCD method has 1982; Bishop et al., 1986). The advantages of TCD consist been examined by several authors. Some studies have first in high temporal resolution providing information shown only slight specific hemispheric involvement during about the time course of CBF changes; second, TCD is risk performance of mental tasks (Droste et al., 1989; Dihel et free for subjects and may be repeated as often as needed al., 1990; Harders et al., 1992; Kelley et al., 1992). In with low application costs. The main disadvantage of TCD other studies, language tasks resulted in a blood flow is its low spatial resolution, determined by the size of the velocity shift to the left compared with a visuospatial task cerebral area supplied by the artery being studied. (Markus and Boland, 1992; Hartje et al., 1994; Silvestrini Recently, there has been increased interest in TCD as a et al., 1994; Rihs et al., 1995). Overall, different verbal method for studying functional hemispheric asymmetry tasks induce a clear left-sided asymmetry in blood flow activation and the findings from non-verbal tasks are * Corresponding author. Tel.: 06-5914436. Fax: 06-5922086. equivocal. The different results obtained on verbal and 0022-510X / 97 / $17.00  1997 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved PII S0022-510X(97)05375-6