Vallar G, Di Betta A M, Silveri M C
Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università di Roma La Sapienza, Italy.
Neuropsychologia. 1997 Jun;35(6):795-812. doi: 10.1016/s0028-3932(96)00127-3.
Two left brain-damaged patients (L.A. and T.O.) with a selective impairment of auditory-verbal span are reported. Patient L.A. was unable to hold auditory-verbal material in the phonological store component of short-term memory. His performance was however normal on tasks requiring phonological judgements, which specifically involve the phonological output buffer component of the rehearsal process. He also showed some evidence that rehearsal contributed to the immediate retention of auditory-verbal material. Patient T.O. never made use of the rehearsal process in tasks assessing both immediate retention and the ability to make phonological judgements, but the memory capacity of the phonological short-term store was comparatively preserved. These contrasting patterns of impairment suggest that the phonological store component of verbal short-term memory was severely impaired in patient L.A., and spared, at least in part, in patient T.O. The rehearsal process was preserved in L.A., and primarily defective in T.O. The localisation of the lesions in the left hemisphere (L.A.: inferior parietal lobule, superior and middle temporal gyri; T.O.: sub-cortical premotor and rolandic regions, anterior insula) suggests that these two sub-components of phonological short-term memory have discrete anatomical correlates.
报告了两名左脑损伤患者（L.A.和T.O.），他们存在听觉言语广度的选择性损伤。患者L.A.无法将听觉言语材料保存在短期记忆的语音存储成分中。然而，在需要语音判断的任务中，他的表现正常，这些任务特别涉及复述过程的语音输出缓冲成分。他还表现出一些证据表明复述有助于听觉言语材料的即时保持。患者T.O.在评估即时保持和语音判断能力的任务中从未使用复述过程，但语音短期存储的记忆容量相对保留。这些不同的损伤模式表明，言语短期记忆的语音存储成分在患者L.A.中严重受损，而在患者T.O.中至少部分保留。复述过程在L.A.中得以保留，而在T.O.中主要存在缺陷。左半球病变的定位（L.A.：顶下小叶、颞上回和颞中回；T.O.：皮质下运动前区和中央前回区域、前岛叶）表明，语音短期记忆的这两个子成分具有离散的解剖学关联。
