Abstract
A case of anomia coupled with word comprehension difficulty was reported. The symptoms were chronic and stable for more than a year. The patient was a 63-Yearold right-Handed store manager who suffered a left temporal hemorrhage on January 25, 1985. The hematoma was evacuated immediately but fluent neologistic aphasia became apparent. Wernicke aphasia improved slowly over the next several months, and by the end of one year language difficulty became confined to word handling. Comprehension of syntax and repetition returned. The neologism which bad been prominent initially became extinct.
The core symptoms of word handling difficulty were characterized by the following features :
(1) Difficulty of word finding in running speech.
(2) Difficulty of confrontation naming with no category specificity.
(3) Difficulty of word comprehension.
(4) Difficulty of word comprehension also did not have category specificity, but showed confusion among semantically related objects.
(5) Words with naming difficulty and words with comprehension difficulty were not constant and varied depending on test sessions.
Two mechanisms could possibly explain this highly selective word handling difficulty : disorganization of semantic memory structure for words, or obstruction of the access route to the intact word store.
The former explanation seems more plausible, but the latter cannot be dismissed completely. It is highly probable that word processing and syntax processing are subserved by different neurological structures, and that the former is related with the left temporal lobe.
