Neural networks essential for naming and word comprehension.

Lesion/deficit association studies of aphasia commonly focus on one brain region as primarily responsible for a particular language deficit. However, functional imaging and some lesion studies indicate that multiple brain regions are likely necessary for any language task. We tested 156 acute stroke patients on basic language tasks (naming and spoken and written word comprehension) and magnetic resonance diffusion and perfusion imaging to determine the relative contributions of various brain regions to each task. Multivariate linear regression analysis indicated that the error rate on each task was best predicted by dysfunction in several perisylvian regions, with both common and distinct regions for the 3 tasks.