Previous studies have found that the early fitting of cochlear implants in children has beneficial effects on their expressive and receptive language. However, different ages are identified in different studies, and some studies present contradictory results. Starting from these observations, our study suggests that at least two additional factors play an important role in determining linguistic outcomes. The first is the area of language under investigation: lexicon, phonology, morphosyntax, semantics, and pragmatics. The second factor is the typological features of the child's target language. Our study, which involved 33 Italian-speaking children who received a cochlear implant and 33 age and gender matched controls, reveals that lexical, semantic, pragmatic, and phonological knowledge are not particularly vulnerable in these children. By contrast, one area of morphosyntax (production of clitic pronouns) is especially challenging. In addition, an effect of age of implantation was found only in this morphosyntactic area. This is the first study on language development in Italian-speaking children with cochlear implants.

Tumours of the septum pellucidum (SP) are rare and seldom associated with memory impairment either before or after operation. A patient is described who developed amnesia after transcallosal excision of a tumour of the SP. Radiology did not show any major lesion of the brain areas traditionally associated with amnesia. Because septal nuclei could have been damaged during surgery their possible role in memory functions is discussed.Tumours of the septum pellucidum are rare,' 2 and when they do not lead to compression of other brain structures probably cause no symptoms.Memory disorders before operation have seldom been reported,' 2 are poorly described and then usually in association with more general impairment.2 There is little evidence of improvement of memory disorders after the excision of the tumour.' Even more rare is the finding of memory impairment after the excision of a tumour of the septum pellucidum when there was no memory impairment before the operation.' We describe a patient with a tumour of the septum pellucidum diagnosed by CT scan and MRI, without memory impairment before operation. The patient developed a Korsakoff-type syndrome after surgery that was performed by a transcallosal interfornicial approach.3 We discuss the anatomy of the lesion and the possible role of the septal nuclei in memory function.

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