Three variant forms of subcortical aphasia in Chinese stroke patients.

Five right-handed patients with subcortical aphasia that involved the left hemisphere subcortical lesion sites were subjected to CT scans. Given their etiology, two cases were infarctions and the other three were hemorrhages. Two of the patients presented an involvement of the anterior limb of the internal capsule and of the basal ganglia and an anterior superior white-matter lesion extension. In both cases slow scanty dysarthric speech was noted; one had markedly impaired auditory comprehension, and the others were only partially impaired. The third patient presented an involvement of the posterior limb of the internal capsule and of the thalamus and a posterior paraventricular white-matter lesion extension. He had poor auditory comprehension, echolalia, and fluent speech. The last two patients presented an involvement of the internal capsule, the basal ganglia, and the thalamus and an anterior posterior paraventricular white-matter lesion extension. The latter two showed poor auditory comprehension with nonfluent and scanty spontaneous speech. The speech sounds were nonsensical monosyllabic words with a pattern similar to that of global aphasia. All patients had lasting right hemiplegia.