Anemia: Case studies with lesion localization

In a recent case study of anemic aphasia following a unilateral left hemispheric stroke limited to Brodmann's area 37, it was proposed that this area may Be important for object naming by allowing the semantic system access to stored lexical information. Based on this finding and theories postulating a modular system for word retrieval, we proposed that a patient with a lesion to area 37 and another patient with a lesion to a speech production region located serially downstream from area 37 would both be anemic, and in neither case could the anemia be attributed to a significant semantic impairment. Using a case study design to investigate the level of naming disturbance in these two patients with unilateral left hemispheric strokes, we have demonstrated that Patient 1, who had a lesion to area 37, and Patient 2, with a lesion to inferior-lateral portions of Brodmann's area 6, were anemic with semantic knowledge of words relatively preserved.