Impairment of short term memory in left hemispheric traumatic brain injuries

Abstract

We report on two patients with traumatic lesions in the temporal and parietal lobes who demonstrated disturbances of short term memory STM following improvement on the aphasia Patient 1 was a 66 year old right handed man who presented to our hospital with a cerebral contusion One admission we observed a Wernicke s aphasia with paraphasic jargon in this patient that resolved within 8 weeks Patient 2 was a 35 year old right handed woman with an acute subdural haematoma and a cerebral contusion who underwent craniotomy and evacuation of the haematoma In this patient we noted a transient Wernicke s aphasia following the operation that improved within 3 months Linguistically the aphasia observed in each of these two patients was not a typical conduction aphasia because of the absence of paraphasia and impairment of comprehension was unclear despite a decrease in perfor mance on repetition tasks Both verbal and non verbal tasks suggested an impairment in STM These findings suggest that involvement of the left hemisphere may cause disturbances in both verbal and non verbal STM