Pure word deafness with possible transfer of language dominance.

A 55-year-old, right-handed male patient with a past history of a stroke followed by a difficulty of speech and hearing fell and manifested a left hemiplegia. He could neither comprehend spoken language and melody nor repeat them, though he spoke with paraphasia and understood written language and nonverbal sound. An electroencephalogram, pneumoencephalogram and cerebral angiogram suggested the existence of old infarcts in the left temporal lobe and a probable new one in the right cerebrum. A diagnosis of this case was made as pure word deafness which might be caused by a reimpairment of the language function possibly transferred to the nondominant, right hemisphere following the early stroke.