Higher Brain Function Research
Online ISSN : 1880-6716
Print ISSN : 0285-9513
ISSN-L : 0285-9513
Volume 6, Issue 3
Displaying 1-10 of 10 articles from this issue
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Original article
  • Kazuo Hadano, Yoshihisa Tatsuoka, Susumu Morimune, Toshihiko Hamanaka, ...
    1986 Volume 6 Issue 3 Pages 1146-1151
    Published: 1986
    Released on J-STAGE: November 22, 2006
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
         Sixty-eight variables, consisting of the results of 25 subtests of the “Standard Language Test of Aphasia” (SLTA) and 43 speech symptom variables evaluated from conversational speech, were classified by the cluster analysis method. The relatively high similarities among the subtests within SLTA, and the relatively low similarities between SLTA-subtests and the other speech symptoms and among the speech symptoms themselves are shown in the dendrogram. These results suggest thst many aspects of the speech symptoms of aphasia cannot be fully grasped by the SLTA used as a psychometric test-battery.
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  • Kazuo Hadano, Yoshie Matsuda, Masanori Toyoshima, Toshihiko Hamanaka
    1986 Volume 6 Issue 3 Pages 1152-1158
    Published: 1986
    Released on J-STAGE: November 22, 2006
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
         Two kinds of speech symptoms observed in a jargon aphasic was reported ; “the iterative pattern of phonemic variation and semantic variation” . The former is the same as the stereotypic pattern of alliteration and assonance of neologism, which was described by Green (1969). The latter, which we described for the first time in this paper, is characterized by a series of several words which have closely semantic relations each other or belong to the same semantic category. So the iterative pattern of phonemic variation (=alliteration and assonance) is characteristic to neologistic jargon, as that of semantic variation is suggested to be characteristic to a certain type of the semantic jargon.
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  • Kei Hojo, Michinori Ottomo, Shunzou Watanabe, Hiroichi Tasaki, Isao Su ...
    1986 Volume 6 Issue 3 Pages 1159-1166
    Published: 1986
    Released on J-STAGE: November 22, 2006
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
        Fourteen patients with subcortical aphasia secondary to vascular lesions predominantly in the basal ganglia were demonstrated on computed tomographic (CT) scans and studied. The results obtained were as follows :
        1) clinical features ; At the onset, the speech disorders rainged from muteness, Broca's aphasia, transcortical motor aphasia with severe dysarthria and diminished motivation to a mild Wernicke aphasia. In the course of recovery, however, relativeiy homogeneous aphasic symptoms were observed. In spite of the nonfluent speech output of some patients, the predominant aphasia pattern for these fourteen cases was that of good grammatical structures and long phrase lengths with prominent paraphasias. Auditory comprehention was relatively good. Nonparaphasic repetition and reading comprehention were the best preserved functions. Confrontation naming and writing were variably impaired.
        2) CT lesions ; The difference in lesion volume between cases was relatively large. All of these lesions were deep but some were not subcortical, because they involved the insular cortex. In many cases, they were truly subcortical and confined to the left basal ganglia and neighboring white matter. The common lesion in all patients was in the putamen.
        3) prognosis ; The average recovery rate based on serial testing with the Standard Language Test of Aphasia (initial and 3 months later) was significantly higher than any other aphasic group.
        On the basis of these findings, we suggested that the separate aphasic syndrome of these cases could be defined as “striatal” aphasia or “putaminal” aphasia.
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  • Saburo Matsubara, Wataru Nakayama, Eisaku Mihara, Akira Tamai, Hideaki ...
    1986 Volume 6 Issue 3 Pages 1167-1175
    Published: 1986
    Released on J-STAGE: November 22, 2006
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
         Neuropsychological symptoms were studied in 9 cases of presenile dementia suspected of Alzheimer's disease. The patients were diagnosed according to their clinical symptoms, CT-scans and EEGs. (1) Major clinical symptoms included memory disturbance (9 cases), visuo-spatial agnosia (8 cases), constructional apraxia (7 cases), and difficulty in the use of implements (5 cases). (2) In symptoms of visuo-spatial agnosia, disorders of spatial perception and loss of topographical memory were frequent; however, no unilateral visual neglect was observed. (3) Ideomotor apraxia (1 case) and ideational apraxia (2 cases) were observed. Five cases showed difficulty or clumsiness in the use of implements, such as gas or oil heaters, telephones, cultivators, etc. (4) Eight cases showed fluent speech and mild word amnesia. They also showed mild disturbance in language comprehension, especially in word meaning comprehension. Writing to dictation in Kanji characters was more impaired than that in Kana syllabary. (5) From CT-scan studies, the relationship between the location of prominent cerebral atrophy and the neuropsychological symptoms was investigated.
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  • Takashi Kamei
    1986 Volume 6 Issue 3 Pages 1176-1184
    Published: 1986
    Released on J-STAGE: November 22, 2006
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
         The purpose of the study was to assess comprehension capacities in brain-damaged aphasics. Eighteen aphasic patients following left hemisphere lesions (five Broca's, five Wernicke's, five anomic, and three conduction), three aphasic patients following right hemisphere lesions, and ten normal controls were given a sentence comprehension test. The task employed in this test was a sentence-picture matching task. The variables in the sentence material were activepassive formation, plausibility in sentence meaning, and word ordering in noun phrases. Conduction aphasics demonstrated the best test performance, followed by anomic, Broca's and Wernicke's, but there were no significant differences between Broca's and Wernicke's. Conduction aphasics made significantly fewer syntactic and semantic errors than each of the other groups. Broca's aphasics made significantly more syntactic errors than each of the other groups. Right-hemisphere damaged aphasics demonstrated the characteristic test performance. These results were relevant to the hypothesis that the linguistic impairment in Broca's aphasics was limited to a syntactic processing deficit.
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  • Morihiro Sugishita, Masumi Yoshioka
    1986 Volume 6 Issue 3 Pages 1185-1188
    Published: 1986
    Released on J-STAGE: November 22, 2006
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
         Dichotic listening test was administered to a right-handed patient with section of the splenium and probably the posterior end of the truncus of the corpus callosum owing to a germinoma. The patient showed the supression of left ear stimuli both on the divided attention and on the focused attention. The results indicated that the splenium plus the posterior end of the truncus or the splenium is crucial in the interhemispheric transfer of speech inputs from the right hemisphere to the left.
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