MRI and SPECT Relationship in Lesion Localization of Aphasics

We investigated 30 stroke patients with aphasia in order to evaluate the relationshipbetween the clinical findings and structural/functional lesion sites. Language evaluationswith Gülhane aphasia test (GAT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) seans were performed. GAT revealed that we had 12 global, 8 Broca, 4 Wernicke, 3 anomic, 1 transcortical motor, 1 transcortical sensory, 1 subcortical aphasia patients. When we compared the structural and functionallesion sites on MRI and SPECT with clinical findings, we observed diffirent localizations including subcortical ones along with clasically know localizations. We interpreted the cortical hypoperfusion on SPECT related to the subcortical areas on MRI as "diaschisis". When we compared the lesion size on MRI and SPECT, we found that the functional lesionsize was greater than the structural one. So the differences between the aphasia types might be related to this finding.