Chronic aphasia subsequent to striato-capsular and thalamic lesions in the left hemisphere

The language abilities of a group of seven chronic aphasics with vascular lesions centered on the striato-capsular region and thalamus of the left hemisphere were described. A range of severity and types of chronic language disorder were documented through assessment using a battery of standardized language tests. The most common language disorder documented was a naming impairment of varying degrees of severity, exhibited by six of the seven cases. The majority of subjects made predominantly semantic errors in the naming task; however, each subject produced a variety of error types and there was no pattern of errors characteristic of the group. The language data obtained were used to evaluate previously developed models of the role of the subcortical structures in naming functions.