The communication effects of right brain damage on the very old and the not so old

Abstract

Communication descriptions of right brain damaged (RBD) subjects have usually involved groups heterogeneous in time since incident, age and education and the older elderly, who comprise an increasing proportion of the population, have received little specific attention. The paper describes the one month post stroke communication behaviour of two RBD groups, aged <75 years (group 1, n=36) and aged 75+ (group 2, n=12) and two non-brain damaged (NBD) equivalent groups (group 1, n=40, group 2, n=20). All subjects had basic education only, until age 14 or 15. In RBD group 1 many of the commonly reported deficits were observed, such as in comprehension of metaphor and inference and reduction in amount of descriptive content. Overall, group 1 subjects with subcortical lesions (LACI, n=15) performed similarly to those with large anterior circulation infarcts (TACI, n=13). Performance of RBD group 1 was similar to that of NBD group 2, except that in conversation the RBD group showed more limited nonverbal behaviour. In contrast to the demonstrated communication problems of group 1 RBD subjects, in the majority of assessed components the scores of RBD and NBD group 2 subjects were equivalent.