Penetrating war injuries of the basal forebrain: neurology and cognition.

We compared the neurologic and cognitive performance of 15 young veterans who suffered unilateral penetrating missile wounds to the basal forebrain 15 years ago in the Vietnam War with uninjured controls and patients with lesions elsewhere in the brain. The subjects performed worse on tests of episodic memory, reasoning, and arithmetic and had more prolonged unconsciousness after injury; but their performance usually compared favorably with that of uninjured controls on tests of intelligence, attention, and language and was not consistent with that of a demented patient. The data suggest that the basal forebrain is functionally related to the reticular formation and to the basal forebrain is functionally related to the reticular formation and to the limbic-hippocampal memory system.