Abstract
Four cases of crossed aphasia with left unilateral spatial agnosia were reported. One was a 71-year-old male, and two were 59 and 60-year-old females. They had all suffered from strokes. The other was a 45-year-old female with a brain tumor. All CT-scans demonstrated low density areas in the right hemisphere only and the left ones were all intact. All speech and language skills were assessed with the standard language test for aphasia. One case was of sensory aphasia and the other three were of motor aphasia. It was found that they showed agrammatism and agraphia in common, but were near normal in auditory comprehension ; that is, expressive deficits were more prominent than receptive. All cases displayed left unilateral spatial agnosia in drawing test.
Several reported cases of crossed aphasia have been found to have had good recovery rates. However, the present cases showd little improvement in agrammatism, agraphia and left unilateral spatial agnosia. The literature on crossed aphasia to date has focused on the linguistic characteristics of crossed aphasia, with little reference to concomitant visuospatial deficits closely resembling those usually found with lesions of the nondominant hemisphere. As to the presence of spatial symptoms in crossed aphasia, Henderson concluded that right-sided language represen tation does not usually affect right hemisphere dominance for attention and visuospatial perception. At any rate, it is left unexplored whether their left hemisphere ability to take over spatial functions after right brain damage is different from that of the general right-handed population.
