Crossed Aphasia in a Patient with Anaplastic Astrocytoma of the Non-Dominant Hemisphere

Aphasia describes a spectrum of speech impairments due to damage in the language centers of the brain. Insult to the inferior frontal gyrus of the dominant cerebral hemisphere results in Broca's aphasia - the inability to produce fluent speech. The left cerebral hemisphere has historically been considered the dominant side, a characteristic long presumed to be related to a person's "handedness". However, recent studies utilizing fMRI have shown that right hemispheric dominance occurs more frequently than previously proposed and despite a person's handedness. Here we present a case of a right-handed patient with Broca's aphasia caused by a right-sided brain tumor. This is significant not only because the occurrence of aphasia in right-handed-individuals with right hemispheric brain damage (so-called "crossed aphasia") is unusual but also because such findings support dissociation between hemispheric linguistic dominance and handedness.