Marina Scarpa

The incidence of aphasia and global aphasia in left brain-damaged patients.

Two hundred and twenty three right-handed patients consecutively admitted to the wards in a 21-month period for a left-sided cerebrovascular disease were examined 15 to 30 days after the stroke for the presence of aphasia. Twenty-seven of them could not be assessed. Of the remaining 196, 108 (55.1%) were aphasic. The incidence of global aphasia (43%) in the latter group was higher than in previous studies. Based on CT-scan data it was associated in 32% of patients with a deep lesion and only in 53% with an antero-posterior cortical-subcortical lesion, contrary to what is traditionally assumed. There was no sex difference in the incidence and distribution of aphasia.

A model-based study of learning and memory following transient global amnesia attacks.

Verbal learning and forgetting were studied in patients one month after an episode of Transient Global Amnesia and in normal control subjects by means of a two-stage stochastic model, which allows independent measurements of encoding, storage and forgetting. We preliminarily ascertained both the necessity and the sufficiency of the model to account for several performance scores of the two experimental groups, and then compared the learning and forgetting functions between groups. In spite of the analytical power of the statistical method adopted. Transient Global Amnesia was not found to entail persistent impairment of encoding and storage, as well as of retaining memory traces and retrieval algorhythm.

Disconnection Syndrome and Verbal, Spatial and Tactile Amnesia following a Tumor of the Splenium of the Corpus Callosum

A patient with a severe amnesic syndrome following a glioma of the splenium of the corpus callosum is reported. The long-term memory deficit involved anterograde as well as retrograde events dating back to 40 years and causing topographical disorientation. Short-term memory test performance was in the normal range, with the exception of tactile memory which was severely impaired.The patient also showed disconnection symptoms, due to severing of occipito-parietal and parieto-temporal connections, while parieto-parietal connections were undamaged.