Mania secondary to left and right hemisphere damage.

The authors report on two fully right-handed men without prior psychiatric history who developed mania secondary to vascular lesions of the left and right hemispheres, respectively. One patient, whose left hemisphere lesion produced a transient posterior aphasia, is believed to be the first patient reported in the literature whose secondary mania followed damage to the hemisphere documented to be dominant for both handedness and speech. The authors conclude that it is premature to consider mania to a be syndrome of the nondominant hemisphere.