Introduction: In amnesic syndromes, it's usually to see dissociation between episodic, semantic and procedural memory. However, a few reports have been found about musical memory's processing and the relation with classic memory systems.
Aim: To describe the musical's abilities preserved in a patient with amnesic syndrome and discuss possible neuropsychological and neurobiological bases implicated.
Case report: A 28-years-old woman presenting with amnesic syndrome is reported. Following a carbon monoxide encephalophaty and subsequent hypoxia she remained in coma for 10 days with evidence of bilateral temporal changes, mainly affecting basal ganglia areas. The patient showed anterograde amnesia and semantic memory impairment, with disproportionately spared musical abilities' performance, either music perception (discrimination and recognition of tonal melodies, musical sight-reading) or music production (song and instrumental performance) or musical memory.
Conclusions: This case suggests that the music require elaborate bihemispheric processing and may implicate different forms of information processing. The neural network involved in musical memory can be different that the declarative memory systems (episodic and semantic).