Afasias e áreas cerebrais: argumentos prós e contras à perspectiva localizacionista

the aim of the present work was to investigate how cortex areas compromised by cerebral vascular accident (cva) are related to the classification of aphasia, since there are controversies about the location of the lesion in the brain and the characteristics related to variations in speech patterns. through the montreal-toulose protocol, 26 right-handed persons who were affected by left cerebral-vascular lesion and have been showing aphasic symptoms have been evaluated. the montreal-toulose protocol, initial standard module - version alpha, includes nomination, repetition, oral comprehension, reading and writing comprehension tests as well as an interview, which allows an evaluation of the discourse fluency. the subjects were allocated into four sub-groups, according to the lesion sites: frontal, temporal, temporo-parietal and parieto-occipital. for the analysis of the data, a multidimensional similarity structure analysis (ssa) was carried out along with an external variable method. the results show a high positive correlation between the lesion in the brain's frontal lobe and difficulties in the discourse fluency as well as a high positive correlation between the lesion in the brain's temporal lobe and hindrances in all abilities tested: nomination, repetition, oral comprehension, reading and writing comprehension. it is in accordance with localizational studies, since it highlights the fundamental role of the temporal lobe for the language and the importance of the frontal lobe for the speech praxis. however, in the remaining sub-groups (temporo-parietal and parieto-occipital) there have been positive correlations only between oral comprehension and repetition, with the latter showing correlation only with the second group and presenting a low score. high negative correlations with the discourse fluency were observed. it suggests that this ability has remained preserved in those groups, which in turns weakens the localization argument.