A case of cortical deafness

At the age of 42 Lothar H. suffered a left-sided ischaemic brain lesion with transient aphasia, followed at the age of 49 by a right-sided ischemic infarction, which caused a continuous inability to understand spoken language and to identify tones and noises. He was still able to discriminate between single qualities of pure tones. The ERA-results showed the central acoustic pathways of the brain-stem to be intact. The occurrence of cortical deafness following bilateral lesions of the acoustic cortex and adjoining cortical centres supports the view that human auditory recognition is represented in both temporoparietal areas.