Impairment of short-term memory in left hemispheric traumatic brain injuries.
We report on two patients with traumatic lesions in the temporal and parietal lobes who demonstrated disturbances of short-term memory (STM) following improvement on the aphasia. Patient 1 was a 66-year-old right-handed man who presented to our hospital with a cerebral contusion. One admission we observed a Wernicke's aphasia with paraphasic jargon in this patient that resolved within 8 weeks. Patient 2 was a 35-year-old right-handed woman, with an acute subdural haematoma and a cerebral contusion, who underwent craniotomy and evacuation of the haematoma. In this patient we noted a transient Wernicke's aphasia following the operation that improved within 3 months. Linguistically, the aphasia observed in each of these two patients was not a typical conduction aphasia because of the absence of paraphasia, and impairment of comprehension was unclear despite a decrease in performance on repetition tasks. Both verbal and non-verbal tasks suggested an impairment in STM. These findings suggest that involvement of the left hemisphere may cause disturbances in both verbal and non-verbal STM.
Maeshima
S
S
Department of Neurological Surgery, Wakayama Medical College, Wakayama, Japan.
Uematsu
Y
Y
Ozaki
F
F
Fujita
K
K
Nakai
K
K
Itakura
T
T
Komai
N
N
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006408:Hematoma, Subdural / Q000150:complications* / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008569:Memory Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000098:blood supply / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000098:blood supply / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D015899:Tomography, Emission-Computed, Single-Photon; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed