Neurological basis of deficits in affective prosody comprehension among alcoholics and fetal alcohol-exposed adults

Affective prosody is a nonlinguistic aspect of language that conveys emotions and attitudes during discourse. In this study the neurological basis of affective prosodic comprehension (APC) dysfunction in alcoholics (ALC) and fetal alcohol-exposed adults (FAexp) was explored. Subjects were previously tested for APC by use of the Aprosodia Battery, including 9 right-brain-damaged and 10 left-brain-damaged subjects. ALC and FAexp subjects were significantly less accurate than control subjects in APC, and scored similarly to patients with focal brain lesions. The specific APC impairment found in ALC and FAexp may be a consequence of both callosal and right cortical dysfunction or damage.