| Sumario: | We present results from a case, referred to as Patient, who experienced severe alterations to neural and physical functioning following routine vaccinations for college, with a working diagnosis of autoimmune encephalitis. Whereas most of these changes led to deficits, Patient reported experiencing spared or even improved functioning in the domain of music. We report laboratory tests of these anecdotal reports. Patient completed a battery of measures that included singing accuracy, imitation of spoken and sung pitch patterns, music perception, mental imagery (for musical pitch, phonology, and visual scenes), and short-term memory (for musical pitch and spoken digits). Results from most tests bore out Patient's anecdotal experiences: She performed unusually well in measures of singing accuracy, voice quality, pitch perception, and self-reported auditory imagery vividness. Patient was spared (normal functioning) for measures of pitch span and accuracy of auditory imagery. By contrast, Patient underperformed on digit span and visual imagery. Poor performance was also noted on imitation of spoken sentences and short melodies, possibly reflecting the reduced tonal salience of these stimuli. Overall, these results converge with other evidence for neural separation of musical pitch processing from other auditory and cognitive processes. Whereas previous reports on the effects of autoimmune encephalitis have revealed cognitive deficits in non-musical tasks, the present data suggest that such conditions may have more complex effects across a broader range of tasks.
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