The ability to perceive and produce music is a quintessential element of
human life, present in all known cultures. Modern functional
neuroimaging has revealed that music listening activates a large-scale
bilateral network of cortical and subcortical regions in the healthy
brain. Even the most accurate structural studies do not reveal which
brain areas are critical and causally linked to music processing. Such
questions may be answered by analysing the effects of focal brain
lesions in patients´ ability to perceive music. In this sense, acquired
amusia after stroke provides a unique opportunity to investigate the
neural architectures crucial for normal music processing. Based on the
first large-scale longitudinal studies on stroke-induced amusia using
modern multi-modal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques, such as
advanced lesion-symptom mapping, grey and white matter morphometry,
tractography and functional connectivity, we discuss neural structures
critical for music processing, consider music processing in light of the
dual-stream model in the right hemisphere, and propose a neural model
for acquired amusia.