Citation

Levin HS, Fletcher JM, Kusnerik L, Kufera JA, Lilly MA, Duffy FF, Chapman S, Mendelsohn D, Bruce D. Cortex 1996; 32(3): 461-478.

Affiliation

Division of Neurosurgery, University of Maryland Medical System, Baltimore, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1996, Masson Editeur)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

8886522

Abstract

The effects of closed head injury (CHI) severity (mild vs. severe) and age at injury were analyzed in a longitudinal study (3. 12 months postinjury) of semantic memory which used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to characterize focal brain lesions. Semantic memory was evaluated by word and category fluency, semantic verification, semantic clustering in word list recall, and vocabulary. Episodic memory was assessed by word list recall. Comparison of normal control (n = 104) data with the patients' data (n = 77) at 3 months postinjury disclosed semantic and episodic memory deficits in the severe CHI patients. Analysis of the longitudinal data revealed significant effects of age at injury for all of the semantic memory measures. The effects of injury severity were confined to the latency of verifying correct statements. Volume of left frontal and extrafrontal lesions was predictive of performance on several semantic memory measures, but less robust for right hemisphere lesions.

Language: en