Recovery of naming in aphasia: relationship to fluency, comprehension and CT findings.
We assessed oral naming skill after left hemisphere ischemic stroke in 54 right-handed aphasics. Initially, almost all had moderate to severe disability in oral naming. After 6 months, normal scores were achieved by one-third of the patients, all with lesions less than 60 cm3 in volume. Only 2 of 18 patients who were nonfluent at 6 months had normal naming then. Among patients with lesions less than 60 cm3 and persistently poor naming, there were two discrete lesion sites: posterior superior temporal-inferior parietal (semantic paraphasic errors) and insula-putamen (phonologic paraphasic errors). Individual variability was notable, with several patients regaining normal naming ability despite posterior temporal or insula-putamen lesions.
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001037:Aphasia / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D011446:Prospective Studies; D011699:Putamen / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D011859:Radiography; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging