Aphasia due to lesions confined to the right hemisphere in right handed patients: a review of the literature including the Italian cases

Abstract

We review most of the work published, to our knowledge, between 1880 and 1988 on aphasia due to right cerebral lesions in right-handed patients ("crossed aphasia"). We summarize the 87 cases found in chronological order within defined groups, dealing in greater detail with the less well-known cases in English-language publications and with the cases from other sources that we consider most representative and convincing. The 87 cases fall into three groups on the following criteria: right-handedness (on standardized tests), absence of left-handers in the family, left hemisphere integrity. Group 1 comprises cases that are unreliable because the handedness data are missing and/or because left hemisphere lesions were known to be present or probably were so. Group 2 comprises cases with full clinical data but no formal test of handedness, with familial cases of left-handedness and/or without satisfactory evidence of left hemisphere integrity. Groups 3 comprises the 26 reliable cases, that is those with proven right-handedness, no left-handers in the family and with proven hemisphere integrity. We discuss the implications of these cases.

Anomalous Cerebral Language Organization: Acquired Crossed Aphasia in a Dextral Child

“…From 1975 on, a starting-point chosen because Faglia, Rottoli, and Vignolo (1990) showed that all fully acceptable CAD cases were published thereafter, we encountered only four dextral children (2.3%) in a corpus of 169 aphasic cases with righthemisphere injury.…”

Acquired Crossed Aphasia in Dextral Children Revisited

“…From 1975, a starting point chosen because Faglia et al (1990) showed that all fully acceptable CAD cases were published thereafter, we gathered from the literature all right-handed patients with an aphasic syndrome following damage to the right hemisphere. From this corpus of 170 cases, enriched with 10 personal observations, all childhood cases were selected.…”

“…Cultural and idiosyncratic factors such as bi-or polyglottism, illiteracy, tonal language use, and use of an ideographic script were introduced in the 1980s as additional exclusion criteria (e.g., Joanette, Puel, Nespoulous, Rascol, & Lecours, 1982). The latest tendency has been to reduce the number of exclusion criteria again to essentially the same criteria as proposed by Brown and Wilson (1973) (e.g., Faglia, Rottoli, & Vignolo, 1990). Brown and Hécaen (1973) were the first to define CAD as a semiologically uniform syndrome.…”

Gekreuzte Aphasie

“…Bei nichtvaskulären Krankheitsbildern (z. B. Hirntumoren [9,10], Epilepsien [11], Schädel-Hirn-Traumata [12], neurodegenerativen Erkrankungen [13], Fallübersichten bei [14,15]), ist es aufgrund unterschiedlicher zugrunde liegender Pathomechanismen besonders wichtig, mittels suffizienter (ggf. auch funktioneller) Bildgebung definitiv (subklinische) linkshemisphärische Läsionen auszuschließen, bevor eine gekreuzte Aphasie diagnostiziert wird [16].…”