Short-term memory deficit after focal parietal damage

The neuropsychological symptomatology is reported for a 44-year-old patient of normal intelligence, EE, after removal of a circumscribed left hemispheric tumor the major part of which was located in the angular gyrus and in the subcortical white matter. EE had a distinct and persistent short-term memory impairment together with an equally severe impairment in transcoding numbers. On the other hand, his performance was flawless in calculation tasks and in all other tests involving number processing. Impairments in language tests could be attributed to his short-term memory deficit, which furthermore was characterized by a strong primacy effect in the absence of a recency effect. His graphomotoric output was temporarily inhibited. The patient, with a strong left-sided dominance, manifested a bi-hemispherical activation of the Broca and Wernicke regions in a positron-emission-tomographic investigation when required to produce verbs which he was to derive from nouns. The findings in EE suggest that unilateral and restricted lateral parietal damage can result in a profound short-term memory deficit together with a transcoding deficit for stimuli extending over only a few digits or syllables in the absence of any symptoms of the Gerstmann syndrome.