Faculty Collaboration Database

Lesion localization of speech comprehension deficits in chronic aphasia. Neurology 2017 Mar 07;88(10):970-975

Date

02/10/2017

Pubmed ID

28179469

Pubmed Central ID

PMC5333516

DOI

10.1212/WNL.0000000000003683

Scopus ID

2-s2.0-85014816931 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site)   68 Citations

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) was used to localize impairments specific to multiword (phrase and sentence) spoken language comprehension.

METHODS: Participants were 51 right-handed patients with chronic left hemisphere stroke. They performed an auditory description naming (ADN) task requiring comprehension of a verbal description, an auditory sentence comprehension (ASC) task, and a picture naming (PN) task. Lesions were mapped using high-resolution MRI. VLSM analyses identified the lesion correlates of ADN and ASC impairment, first with no control measures, then adding PN impairment as a covariate to control for cognitive and language processes not specific to spoken language.

RESULTS: ADN and ASC deficits were associated with lesions in a distributed frontal-temporal parietal language network. When PN impairment was included as a covariate, both ADN and ASC deficits were specifically correlated with damage localized to the mid-to-posterior portion of the middle temporal gyrus (MTG).

CONCLUSIONS: Damage to the mid-to-posterior MTG is associated with an inability to integrate multiword utterances during comprehension of spoken language. Impairment of this integration process likely underlies the speech comprehension deficits characteristic of Wernicke aphasia.

Author List

Pillay SB, Binder JR, Humphries C, Gross WL, Book DS

Authors

Jeffrey R. Binder MD Professor in the Neurology department at Medical College of Wisconsin
Diane S. Book MD Associate Professor in the Neurology department at Medical College of Wisconsin
William Gross MD, PhD Assistant Professor in the Anesthesiology department at Medical College of Wisconsin
Sara B. Pillay PhD Assistant Professor in the Neurology department at Medical College of Wisconsin

MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold

Acoustic Stimulation
Adult
Aged
Aged, 80 and over
Aphasia
Brain
Brain Mapping
Comprehension
Female
Functional Laterality
Humans
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Middle Aged
Neuropsychological Tests
Semantics
Speech
Stroke