A case with amnesia caused by bilateral thalamic infarctions has been reported. A 63-year-old right-handed man suddenly became unconscious, and recovered in a few hours after admission. The lesions seemed to involve the dorsomedial nucleus of the thalamus bilaterally on computed tomography. Aphasia and mental deterioration were not found, but the patient showed a severe anterograde and retrograde amnesia (he could not recall some events occurring 15 years ago) and disorientation. Moreover, he was indiffrent to his own amnesia. Immediate recall,appeared to be intact, but free recall and recognition recall became markedly impaired after a distractor activity for 30 seconds. He exhibited a strong primacy and recency effect.
    He showed little improvement neuropsychologically. 11 months after the onset, almost the same results were gained as the previous ones in the examinations.
    The present case was different from the case with Korsakow' s syndrome in that the patient showed little confabulatory respnse and no frontal dysfunction.

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     Nine patients with right frontal lobe lesions were evaluated for double scnsory stimulation, line bisection, figure drawing, line canceration, hemiparesis, hemianopia and Wecksler Adult Intelligence Scale. The lesions consisted of carebral infarction, putaminal hemorrhage, subcortical hemorrhage, cerebral contusion, arteriovenous malformation and brain tumor.
    Four patients showed unilateral spatial neglect (USN) for three weeks up to several month after onset. The CT findings of these patients showed a frontal cortex with widespread subcortical area, middle-size basal ganglia, or frontoparietal lesions.
    Five patients did not show USN. They had frontal base, localized prefrontal lobe, or small basal gangelia lesions.
    It is concluded from these findings that cases of right frontal lobe USN are caused by disruption of a corticolimbic retiicular loop.

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     The use of adverbs and onomatopoeia for verbal speech facilitation was investigated in seven aphasic patients. The patients were requested to speak the proper verb adapted to an active picture after auditory presentation of an adverb and onomatopoeia (Test 1 ) , and to speak spontaneously after repetition of an adverb and onomatopoeia (Test 2 ).
    The results indicated that proper verbal speech was more difficult in Test 1 than in Test 2, and that onomatopoeia facilitated verbal speech significantly more than adverbs. These findings suggest that onomatopoeia is the more effective cue in spontaneous speech, and that the semantic processing of adverbs and onomatopoeia are different.

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