Severe stuttering associated with right hemisphere lesion

Stuttering as a Manifestation of Right-Hemispheric Subcortical Stroke

“…The patient reported by Horner and Massey [4], with a massive destruction of the right hemisphere, had progressive dysfluency with sound, syllable, word and even phrase re iterations, thus probably suffering from palilalia rather than stuttering. The cases reported recently by Fleet and Heilman [5] and by Ardila and Lopez [6], and the present case, answered the above criteria of neurogenic stuttering and demonstrated stuttering characteristics similar to those seen after bilateral or left-sided le sions.…”

“…In both cases, callosal pathways were most probably involved. In the other case reports of stuttering after right-sided dam age, it is difficult to analyze the possible role of specific brain structures, due to lack of lesion tomographic data [3] or extensiveness of the lesion [4,6], (These shortcom ings preclude lesion analysis also in most of the reported cases of stuttering secondary to left-hemispheric dam age. )…”

“…Stuttering from right-sided stroke is rare and, to our knowledge, was reported in only 4 cases [3][4][5][6]. Such cases are interesting in view of the possibility that im paired interhemispheric dynamics play an etiological role in stuttering [7][8][9].…”

Another Case of Word-Final Disfluencies

“…Van Borsel/Geirnaert/Van Coster thology. In the case studied by Ardila and Lopez [3] too the right hemisphere was involved: CT scans showed extensive low-density areas in the right temporal lobe. Of the 8 stutterers with disfl uencies in word-fi nal position described by Rosenfi eld et al [4] , 1 had a lesion in the right supplementary motor area, 1 had a lesion in the territory of the left middle cerebral artery, 1 had a Dandy-Walker malformation with an associated posterior fossa cyst and hydrocephalus, 1 developed temporal lobe epilepsy on the left, and in 4 others no focal lesion was found.…”

“…Most repetitions occurred in initial position. Ardila and Lopez [3] reported reiterations 'for all the positions within the word' in a 50-year-old right-handed patient who had suffered a stroke. In a study by Rosenfi eld et al [4] , 8 patients, who developed speech disfl uencies subsequent to different kinds of cerebral compromise, all had disfl uencies in fi nal word position as well as initial and medial.…”