Patterns of Speech and Language Recovery Following Left Striato-Capsular Hemorrhage

The speech and language abilities of four subjects with CT scan documented dominant hemisphere striato-capsular haemorrhages were assessed at three, six and twelve months post-onset in order to document patterns of speech and language recovery. At three months post-onset, all the subjects studied presented with some aphasic features although the pattern of language disorder exhibited by the group was heterogeneous. At twelve months post-onset, all four had some degree of long-lasting deficit detected by the assessments used in the current study. The striato-capsular aphasics assessed here had variable lesion sites and aphasia types and did not display a homogeneous pattern of recovery, nor did they recover to the same extent. It is suggested that similar prognostic variables (e.g. size of the lesion, severity of the language disorder at onset) are operational in the recovery of aphasia whether the lesion site is cortical or subcortical. The possible mechanisms underlying the observed aphasias are discussed