1994 Volume 14 Issue 4 Pages 221-229
The present preliminary study was conducted to determine whether category-specific impairments are present in the naming and auditory omprehension performances of Gogi aphasics.
Five Gogi aphasic patients participated in the first experiment which consisted of naming and pointing tests, using ninety pictures of well-known objects, divided into nine categories. Categories were: vegetables / fruits, musical instruments, processed foods, sports, animals, utensils, vehicles, colors, and, body parts. Four cases involved lobar atrophy. The other was a case of herpes simplex encephalitis. All had damage to the left anterior and midtemporal lobe in common. All patients showed a high success rate in naming and pointing to colors and body parts, but a low success rate in naming and pointing to vegetables / fruits and musical instruments. The naming and pointing performances for other categories varied among the patients.
Three of the original four patients with lobar atrophy participated in a second follow-up experiment consisting of the same tests as the first. All patients had severer deficiencies in the naming and pointing of all categories except colors and body parts. The performances for colors and body parts were the same or slightly worse than those of the first experiment.
The results of the two experiments indicated the following. In Gogi aphasics with lesions involving the left anterior and midtemporal lobe, the production and auditory comprehension of words belonging to the semantic categories of colors and body parts were selectively spared. Therefore, for colors and body parts, the concept-processing systems and the mediation systems to take concepts and stimulate the production of word-forms, or to receive words and cause the brain to evoke the corresponding concepts, appear to be located in areas other than the left anterior and midtemporal lobe.
