[Disorders of speech and hearing in the Landau-Kleffner syndrome]

The authors demonstrate a child with Landau-Kleffner's syndrome, i.e. the syndrome of so-called acquired aphasia of child age associated with paroxysmal EEG activity, which was described in 1957 by the above mentioned authors. It is characterized by loss of speech (receptive and expressive function), EEG changes, behavioral disorders, psychomotor disorders and epileptic seizures. In the discussion the authors advocate the term "so-called epileptic aphasia", as at the onset of the disease acoustic agnosia is not involved but rather sensory aphasia with subsequent impairment of the expressive speech component and epileptic EEG activity.