IMPAIRMENT IN GENERATING AND LEARNING PRO PER-NAMES AFTER ISCHEMIC DAMAGE TO THE LEFT TUBERO-THALAMLUS

Predominant impairment or preservation of category-specific naming and comprehension is not rare in aphasics. Much less frequent is a select ive inability to generate proper names. To our knowledge, only one suc h case has been reported after a left thalamic lesion, located in the ventral anterior nucleus, the mamillo-thalamic tractus and the genu of the internal capsule. We report a new case of selective inability to generate proper names after a left tubero-thalamic infarct. A 65-year old right-handed, man presented with a selective impairment in produci ng proper names, both from photographies or descriptions and on tests of verbal fluency. The deficit was obvious both for persons names and for geographical names. The rest of the neuropsychological testing was remarkable only for a mild verbal amnesia, affecting only serial mate rial (list of words), a reduced fluency for flowers, fruits and musica l instruments, difficulties in learning of new words, and a dissociati on between preserved learning for occupations and impaired learning fo r words on a test of learning of words and occupations (Cohen, 1990). This anomia for proper names could result from an indirect frontal-lob e dysfunction, preventing volontary activation of the phonological rep resentation of proper names.