Left medial parietal lobe and receptive language functions: mixed transcortical aphasia after left anterior cerebral artery infarction

Abstract

Three aphasic patients with infarctions involving the left anterior cerebral artery have been studied. Two had trancortical motor aphasia, and one had mixed transcortical (or isolation) aphasia. Based on computerized tomography in two patients and whole-brain sections in one, the patient with mixed transcortical aphasia had a lesion that went beyond the rolandic fissure to involve the anterior precuneus lobule of the left medial parietal lobe. In the patients with transcortical motor aphasia, the lesion was confined to the frontal lobe. From these cases and other data, it seems likely that the left medial parietal lobe has receptive language functions analogous to the motor language functions of the left medial frontal lobe, thus accounting for the mixed transcortical aphasia observed in the patient whose left anterior cerebral artery infarction involved both the medial parietal and medial frontal lobes.