APHASIA, DICHOTIC TESTING AND DEFECTIVE HEARING

Cerebral lesions causing aphasia are often found close to auditory are as, The aphasia may therefore sometimes be aggravated by hearing probl ems, which are concealed by communicative restrictions, Unilateral les ions of the cerebral auditory system influence the functional ear pref erence disclosed by dichotic tests, For that reason we have examined a phasic patients with recent, initial, unilateral brain infarctions for ear preference with regard to dichotically presented two syllable wor ds, In a consecutive series of 114 patients who could cope with the te st, 29 showed signs of an acquired left ear advantage (LEA), All were offered, and 22 accepted a full scale audiological examination includi ng pure tone, speech and phase audiometry. Nine of these patients show ed retrocochlear or central hearing disturbances, which added to their communicative predicaments. The LEA of 11 patients lacked audiologica l rationales and a compensatory shift of cerebral speech-lateralizatio n cannot be excluded.