Pure anomia with spared action naming due to a left temporal lesion

We report the case of a patient who, after surgical ablation of an angioma in the depth of the left temporal lobe, developed a highly selective impairment of naming. A detailed investigation allowed to exclude a disorder of visual recognition or of semantic memory, and indicated the output lexicon as the most probable site of impairment. Grammatical class effects, with superior action naming, and a high consistency within and across output modalities further characterized the patient's performance. Together with some other recently reported cases, this patient suggests a correlation between temporal lobe lesions outside Wernicke's area and output lexicon disorders. A relatively spared action naming seems to be a characteristic feature of this pattern of impairment.