Pure dysarthria due to small cortical stroke.

The authors describe six patients who presented with dysarthria as their isolated or major symptom from a small cortical stroke. Five had infarction and one had hemorrhage. In the patients with ischemic stroke, the lesions were identified by diffusion-weighted MRI but not by T-2 weighted MRI. The lesions were located lateral to the precentral knob usually at the most lateral part of the imaging. The presumed pathogenesis included embolism in five patients and hypertensive hemorrhage in one.