Between Bouillaud and Broca: An unknown Italian debate on cerebral localization of language.

From 1825 onward, Bouillaud began gathering clinical evidence to support the hypothesis that speech is located in the cerebral frontal lobes. His aim was to provide empirical proof to Gall's theory of a specific substratum of speech in the anterior region of the brain. A well-known discussion ensued inside the French school among supporters and detractors that went far beyond Broca's first report in 1861. Unknown is that Bouillaud's investigations on localization of articulated language also gave rise to a discussion in Italy in the same period. In particular, speech localization formed a central topic in the mid-19th century in Northern Italy mainly thanks to four physicians, Michelangelo Asson, Mosè Rizzi, Gaetano Strambio and Filippo Lussana, who reported on language-impaired patients and approached these cases in the light of Bouillaud's claims. Similarly to the French debate, the Italian medical community also included attacks and advocacies of the hypothesis of a precise localization of articulated language in the frontal lobes. However, they were mainly interested in investigating the anatomo-clinical relationships rather than in supporting Gall's organology. This Italian debate appears to be the first to have developed in the mid-19th century outside that of the French community.

[Neuropsychological rehabilitation in wartime]. / Rehabilitación neuropsicológica en tiempo de guerra.

INTRODUCTION: The decrease in the rate of mortality due to brain damage during the First World War resulted in a large number of veterans with neurological or neuropsychological sequelae. This situation, which was unknown up until then, called for the development of new therapeutic approaches to help them reach acceptable levels of autonomy. DEVELOPMENT: This article reviews the relationship between neuropsychological rehabilitation and warfare, and describes the contributions made by different professionals in this field in the two great conflicts of the 20th century. The First World War was to mark the beginning of neuropsychological rehabilitation as we know it today. Some of the most outstanding contributions in that period were those made by Goldstein and Popplereuter in Germany or Franz in the United States. The Second World War was to consolidate this healthcare discipline, the leading figures at that time being Zangwill in England and Luria in the Soviet Union. Despite being of less importance, geopolitically speaking, the study also includes the Yom Kippur War, which exemplifies how warfare can stimulate the development of neuropsychological intervention programmes. CONCLUSIONS: Today's neuropsychological rehabilitation programmes are closely linked to the interventions used in wartime by Goldstein, Zangwill or Luria. The means employed may have changed, but the aims are still the same, i.e. to help people with brain damage manage to adapt to their new lives.

TITLE: Rehabilitacion neuropsicologica en tiempo de guerra.Introduccion. El descenso de la mortalidad por daño cerebral durante la Primera Guerra Mundial ocasionara un elevado numero de veteranos con secuelas neurologicas o neuropsicologicas. Esta situacion, desconocida hasta entonces, requerira el desarrollo de nuevos abordajes terapeuticos que les ayuden a alcanzar unas cotas de autonomia aceptables. Desarrollo. Este articulo revisa la relacion existente entre la rehabilitacion neuropsicologica y la guerra y describe las aportaciones hechas por diferentes profesionales de este ambito en los dos grandes conflictos belicos del siglo XX. La Primera Guerra Mundial marcara el inicio de la rehabilitacion neuropsicologica tal y como la conocemos actualmente; en ese periodo destacaran las contribuciones realizadas por Goldstein y Poppelreuter en Alemania o Franz en Estados Unidos. La Segunda Guerra Mundial supondra la consolidacion de esta disciplina sanitaria; los principales referentes seran Zangwill en Inglaterra y Luria en la Union Sovietica. Tambien se incluye un conflicto armado de menor repercusion geopolitica, la Guerra del Yom Kippur, que ejemplifica como los enfrentamientos belicos pueden estimular el desarrollo de programas de intervencion neuropsicologica. Conclusion. Los actuales programas de rehabilitacion neuropsicologica estan estrechamente vinculados a las intervenciones empleadas en tiempos de guerra por Goldstein, Zangwill o Luria. Los medios utilizados son distintos, pero los objetivos siguen siendo los mismos: ayudar a las personas con daño cerebral a ser capaces de adaptarse a su nueva vida.

The aphasia quotient: the taxonomic approach to measurement of aphasic disability. 1974.

150 aphasiacs and 59 controls were examined with a scorable, comprehensive battery, designed to be used by the clinician and the research worker. The subtests of Fluency, Information, Comprehension, Repetition and Naming were added and compared to a hypothetical normal of 100 obtaining the "aphasia Quotient." This is a measurement of the severity of language impairment. On the basis of their performance on the subtests, the patients were classified according to taxonomic principles into Global, Motor (Broca's), Isolation, Sensory (Wernicke's), Transcortical Motor, Transcortical Sensory, Conduction and Anomic groups (in order of severity). This classification is considered a clinically valid baseline for research, diagnosis and prognosis.

Cognition in dyschiria: Edoardo Bisiach's theory of spatial disorders and consciousness.

An overview of Bisiach's theory of mental representations and consciousness is presented. Neuropsychological observations on space disorders led Bisiach to consider analogical representations (and not only symbolic representations) as truly 'cognitive', insofar as they are necessary for the normal functioning of linguistic processes. Bisiach's approach to the scientific study of consciousness, conceived both as the private aspect of phenomenal experience and as a monitoring process, is also discussed.

Hermann Zingerle's "Impaired perception of the own body due to organic brain disorders". 1913. An introductory comment, and an abridged translation.

In the late 1970's Edoardo Bisiach and his coworkers provided definitive evidence that spatial unilateral neglect involves a disorder of the internal representation of extra-personal space. A few years later Bisiach and Berti (1987) revived the so far neglected contribution of an Austrian neurologist, Hermann Zingerle (1913). Ninety years ago Zingerle had described the symptom-complex of two right-brain-damaged patients, who showed left hemisomatoagnosia, unawareness of left hemiplegia, and left motor neglect. In addition to the detailed case reports, Zingerle had put forward a unitary interpretation of these deficits in terms of a disordered representation of one side of the body (dyschiria). A unitary representational account of these unilateral impairments was conspicuously absent in the contemporary neurological literature (Anton, Pick, Babinski), and attracted Bisiach's interest. An abridged translation of Zingerle's paper is provided. The clinical case reports and Zingerle's conclusions are discussed, with reference both to Bisiach's views, and to present knowledge of unilateral spatial neglect.

Music and the neurologist. A historical perspective.

Neurological disorders affecting musical function can produce either positive or negative symptoms. Positive phenomena include musicogenic epilepsy (seizures triggered by music), musical partial seizures (hallucinated music as the expression of the seizure), musical release hallucinations (nonepileptic musical hallucinations, usually associated with impaired hearing), and synesthesia (hallucinated colors triggered by musical tones). Negative phenomena comprise the amusias, which can be receptive, expressive, or both, and can selectively involve particular components of musical processing, including pitch, interval, contour, rhythm, meter, timbre, and emotional response. Amusia is often accompanied by aphasia, but each can occur in the absence of the other. Neurological disorders provide evidence that musical processing is multimodal and widely distributed in both cerebral hemispheres.

Early case reports of dyslexia in the United States and Europe.

Current understanding of reading disabilities is rooted in the early observations of physicians dating as far back in history as the 17th century. This article reviews medical case study research from the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States that identified characteristics, etiological factors, and treatment methods of reading disorders. The physicians involved provided rich descriptions of the personal struggles of individuals who lost the ability to read because of brain insult as well as of those who failed to achieve literacy because of reading disability. Although many of the theories that were advanced by these early researchers have not been supported by current investigations, others have been substantiated and withstand the test of time. This article also addresses the validity of case study research from an historic and current-day perspective.

Margaret Kennard on sparing and recovery of function: a tribute on the 100th anniversary of her birth.

Margaret Kennard was an American pioneer in the experimental study of sparing and recovery of function. Her most famous experiments were performed on monkeys and apes at Yale University during the late 1930s and early 1940s. By describing the behavioral effects of brain damage on infantile, juvenile, and older primates, she drew new attention to just how important developmental status can be at the time of neural insult. Kennard also conducted experiments which showed that even adult primates can exhibit significant sparing and recovery of function, especially if brain lesions are made in stages rather than all at once. In many respects, Kennard helped launch the modern era of research on sparing and recovery of function by demonstrating that several factors in addition to lesion locus can affect post-injury performance and by recognizing that, if neural reorganization does occur, it probably takes place in spared parts of the damaged system.

A historical review of topographical disorientation and its neuroanatomical correlates.

Topographical disorientation (TD) refers to impaired orientation and navigation in real-world environments. Although numerous cases have been reported, disagreement over neuroanatomical correlates remains. This has been contributed to by concern with the "essential defect," ambiguous terminology, and incomplete assessments. Attention to three factors permits a coherent understanding of the widely divergent descriptions of cognitive deficits and neuroanatomical findings: point in course (acute vs. chronic), characteristics of the environment, and a patient's specific cognitive deficits. Defects in visual learning/recognition of topographical scenes or spatial-topographical knowledge are common, but the "agnosia" versus "amnesia" dichotomy is an oversimplification: Careful assessment typically reveals impairment in both realms. Anterograde TD is most highly associated with medial occipitotemporal lesions in either hemisphere, especially posterior parahippocampal gyrus, whereas TD consequent to right parietal damage tends to be time-limited. Persistent retrograde TD is attributable to right medial occipitotemporal lesions.

La Peyronie and the experimental search for the seat of the soul: neuropsychological methodology in the eighteenth century.

The birth of scientific neuropsychology is traditionally considered to have taken place during the 19th century when disturbances or losses of specific mental functions were systematically correlated with post-mortem findings of localized cerebral pathology. Attempts at localizing psychic functions were of course made earlier, but they were usually not based on scientific observations with one notable and so far neglected exception. At the beginning of the 18th century the French surgeon François Gigot de La Peyronie systematically tried to correlate deficits of mental functions with autopsy findings. The methodological principles he formulated were sound and do not essentially differ from those used in modern scientific neuropsychology. His method was based on the systematic exclusion of those areas of the brain whose lesions are not associated with disruption of the faculties of the soul combined with the careful examination of cases where such association consistently exists. His conclusions were, however, disappointing from the modern point of view and he obviously failed to found a new scientific discipline. The reasons for this failure obviously lay in the dualistic presuppositions which made him look for the unique locus of mind-body interaction instead of localizing specific functions.

Ward Halstead's contributions to neuropsychology and the Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Test Battery.

This paper reviews the roots from which Halstead began his investigations, the significance of his original collaboration with neurological surgeons, and the long-term implications of his practical approach of observing brain-damaged patients in their everyday living situations in order to identify the problems and limitations they experienced. This work led to development of the Halstead-Reitan Battery (HRB), which has proved to be sensitive to a broad range of neurological variables including location, type, and status of brain lesion. The HRB, in turn, has laid the groundwork for a rehabilitation program (REHABIT) that integrates neuropsychological evaluation with cognitive retraining, using an approach that can be designed to restore the individual's functional ability structure (as contrasted with approaches oriented toward highly specific deficits or toward a general, nonspecific notion of "brain damage."