[Goodglass and Kaplan's test in patients with language difficulties due to thalamic lesions (author's transl)]

Two out of three patients with language difficulties from ischemic, tumoral, or hemorrhagic lesions of the left thalamus were studied by means of Goodglass and Kaplan's test. Results were compared to those obtained by using the same test in a patient with a hemorrhagic lesion in the posterior ramus of the left internal capsule, but no thalamic lesion. They demonstrate the autonomy of the clinical picture of "thalamic aphasia" as described in several cases reported in the published literature. The suggestion is made that the term, aphasia, can be applied to these cases as long as care is taken when defining them.