[Memory disorders after unilateral cerebral lesions]

In contrast to the amnestic syndrome, unilateral hemispheric lesions are mostly connected with selective memory deficits, which are related to either verbal or visual-spatial information. Clinical studies concerning this are mostly about patients with temporal lobe epilepsy. Almost all studies found that significantly worse verbal memory deficits appeared before or after left temporal lobectomy. In contrast to these outcomes, the results concerning right temporal lobectomy (RTL) are nonuniform. There are studies that cannot prove figurative memory deficits before or after RTL and others that ascertain a correlation between RTL and figurative memory deficits. Mean values are always compared with random samples of left and right hemispheric patients. In contrast, the presented study assumes a clinical isolated case and analyses a random sample of neurological patients with different genesis with a standardized memory test (Berlin Amnesia Test, or BAT). As a result, a significant correlation between left hemispheric lesions and verbal memory deficits as well as right hemispheric lesions and visual-spatial memory deficits can be proven. Possible reasons for these differing results with visual-spatial memory deficits are still under discussion.