Pain & Central Nervous System Week via NewsEdge :

2008 APR 28 - (NewsRx.com) -- Researchers detail in 'Unimpaired sentence comprehension after anterior temporal cortex resection,' new data in epilepsy (see also Epilepsy). "Functional imaging studies have demonstrated involvement of the anterior temporal cortex in sentence comprehension. It is unclear, however, whether the anterior temporal cortex is essential for this function," scientists in Utrecht, Netherlands report.

"We studied two aspects of sentence comprehension, namely syntactic and prosodic comprehension in temporal lobe epilepsy patients who were candidates for resection of the anterior temporal lobe. Temporal lobe epilepsy patients (n=32) with normal (left) language dominance were tested on syntactic and prosodic comprehension before and after removal of the anterior temporal cortex. The prosodic comprehension test was also compared with performance of healthy control subjects (n=47) before surgery. Overall, temporal lobe epilepsy patients did not differ from healthy controls in syntactic and prosodic comprehension before surgery. They did perform less well on an affective prosody task. Post-operative testing revealed that syntactic and prosodic comprehension did not change after removal of the anterior temporal cortex. The unchanged performance on syntactic and prosodic comprehension after removal of the anterior temporal cortex suggests that this area is not indispensable for sentence comprehension functions in temporal epilepsy patients," wrote K.H. Kho and colleagues, University Medical Center, Department of Neurosurgery.

The researchers concluded: "Potential implications for the postulated role of the anterior temporal lobe in the healthy brain are discussed."

Kho and colleagues published their study in Neuropsychologia (Unimpaired sentence comprehension after anterior temporal cortex resection. Neuropsychologia, 2008;46(4):1170-8).

For more information, contact K.H. Kho, Rudolf Magnus Institute of Neuroscience, Dept. of Neurosurgery, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, Netherlands.

Publisher contact information for the journal Neuropsychologia is: Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd., the Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, England.

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