Aphasia and depression

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Abstract
For more than 100 years clinicians have recognized that language functions are frequently disrupted by unilateral lesions of the left hemisphere (Broca 1861). For almost the same length of time clinicians have recognized that specific emotional disorders are associated with unilateral brain injury (Kraepelin 1921, Meyer 1904). Some of these emotional disorders have also been lateralized or associated with lesions of one hemisphere. In 1922, Babinski noted that indifference or euphoric reactions can follow right hemisphere cerebral damage. This disorder was later termed the ‘indifference reaction’ by Hecaen (1951) and Denny-Brown, Meyer and Horenstein (1952). Depression, which is the most common emotional disorder following brain lesions has frequently, but not always, been associated with dominant hemisphere lesions (Gainotti 1972, Folstein, Maiberger and McHugh 1977).