Auditory perception in patients with CVA without aphasia

Tests of central auditory function were performed variously on 64 patients with hemiplegia who had suffered a single stroke but with minimal or no aphasia symptoms and with essentially normal hearing. Both right and left hemisphere lesions were represented for comparison of effects on the tests. Reports of central auditory dysfunction generally assume localization in the temporal lobes. Since it was apparent that our tests were revealing positive findings in patients in whom there was no recognized evidence of temporal lobe involvement we deliberately selected for one study 34 patients without clinical signs of such lesions. The tests required selective listening in which patients had to a) perceive and repeat a prime message in the presence of a simultaneously competing meaningful message, either under earphones or in the sound field (loudspeaker), and b) repeat all words in a classic dichotic listening task. The tests reveal different dysfunctions in right vs left hemisphere damage and document that compensatory transfer of function from the usually dominant left side to the fight hemisphere usually occurs only in young children. The dysfunctions appear to be unrelated to temporal lobe lesions.