[Effect of the position and size of the postoperative brain defect on psychological outcome]

Ascribing the origin of neurological and neuropsychological syndromes to certain cerebral areas is a well-known knowledge that has also been introduced in clinical practice. In spite of general acknowledgement of a multifactorial manner of the development of these psychic phenomena there are, however, with regard to the effects of the location and the size of the cerebral parenchymal defects, some diverging opinions with regard to these psychopathological phenomena. On the basis of clinical neuropsychiatric and neuropsychological examinations of 204 patients after extirpation of a cerebral tumour, the effects of the volume of the defects and its location as well as the cortical and subcortical atrophy on the psychic properties of performance and affective-emotional ranges were ascertained.