Latent dysphasia after left hemisphere lesions: A lexical–semantic and verbal memory deficit

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Abstract
Language and verbal memory were investigated in eleven non-aphasic left brain-damaged stroke patients and in a control group comprising matched right brain-damaged patients and normal subjects. The left brain-damaged group was defective in tasks involving lexical/semantic and long-term memory processing, performance in phonological, syntactic and short-term memory tasks being comparatively spared. The anatomical correlate of such a pattern of deficit—which we suggest is termed ‘latent aphasia’—either is subcortical damage or cortical medial temporal and occipital lesions, sparing the perisylvian language area. The possible role of these structures in aspects of language and verbal memory processing is discussed.