© 2004 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd
LETTER
Disruption of facial affect processing in word deafness
1 Department of Psychology, University of New Orleans, LA, USA
2 Jefferson Neurobehavioral Group, University of New Orleans, LA, USA
3 Department of Psychology, University of New Orleans, LA, USA
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr K W Greve;
kgreve@uno.edu
Keywords: affect processing; Florida affect battery; hemispheric disconnection; word deafness
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Word deafness (also known as auditory agnosia for speech, or as auditory verbal agnosia) is a rare neurobehavioral syndrome characterised by an inability to understand spoken language in spite of intact hearing, speaking, reading, writing, and ability to identify non-speech sounds. The lesions associated with this condition tend to be bilateral and symmetrical in nature, and include cortical-subcortical tissue of the anterior part of the superior temporal gyri. However, Heschl’s gyrus is not always damaged completely in the left hemisphere. Moreover, there have been documented cases of word deafness caused by unilateral left hemisphere cortical and subcortical lesions.1 Although these lesions are anatomically different, they represent an effective partial hemispheric disconnection.
Hemispheric disconnection has been associated with unusual disruptions of emotional processing. Bowers and Heilman2 reported a patient with a lesion of the deep white matter of the right occipito-temporo-parietal region. This patient could name famous faces and discriminate affectively
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Submit a response
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when eLetters are posted
- Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
