In recent years a consensus has been reached about the neuroanatomical subs
trate of verbal memory, but this state of knowledge has not yet been implem
ented in clinical practice. One reason for this may be that most of the neu
roscientific studies on verbal memory used different neuropsychological ins
truments and that only a small set of patient groups with the same etiology
but different lesion sites were analysed. Returning to three earlier studi
es, we analyse the possibility to make differential judgements on the verba
l memory impairments of four different patient groups by using the Californ
ia Verbal Learning Test (CVLT). We compare patients with left-sided (n=16)
and right-sided (n=10) posterior cerebral artery infarcts and patients with
infarcts of the left (n=10) or right (n = 21) frontal lobe, and we integra
ted data about their retention errors that had not been analysed so far. Ou
r findings reveal significant differences between these patient groups, con
cerning the quantitative aspects of impairments, and also the profiles of m
emory errors (recall, interference and perseverations). Our study documents
a relation between the site of the lesion and the type of verbal memory im
pairment, agreeing with some of the most recent neuroscientific findings. S
tarting from this observation we try to define a neuropsychological pattern
of memory impairment which enables differential clinical diagnoses using t
he CVLT as a memory test.