Chap. XXX.] HIGHER CEREBRAL FUNCTIONS. 685 



from a lesion altogether away from the third left frontal 

 gyrus, if, as we at present suppose, the regions in which 

 lesions have the greatest tendency to produce one or 

 other of the forms of Amnesia should be situated around 

 the posterior extremity of the left Sylvian Fissure. 



This may be easily understood. Suppose a person to 

 be suflering from a defective activity of the Auditory Word- 

 Centre, so that Names cannot be recalled ' voluntarily ' or 

 by ' association.' There would already be great hesita- 

 tions and difficulties in the expression of Thoughts, both 

 in Speech and in Writing. But suppose this mere defec- 

 tive activity to be replaced by actual destruction of the 

 left Auditory Word-Centre, so that its functional activity 

 became entirely lost : words could then, of course, neither 

 be recalled * voluntarily ' nor by ' association ' ; and still 

 further, they could not be perceived and consequently could 

 not be imitated. An individual thus affected would neither 

 be able to Speak nor to Write, that is, he would be com- 

 pletely Aphasic — with the superadded peculiarity that he 

 would not readily comprehend spoken and perhaps written 

 Language. The latter ability might persist to some extent, 

 because the molecular equilibrium of the Auditory Word- 

 Centre and of the related Visual-Centre of the opposite 

 Hemisphere might not be sufficiently disturbed to prevent 

 all apprehension of spoken or of written symbols.. We 

 might, in fact, have in such a case, the production of a 

 complex Aphasic condition almost precisely similar to that 

 met with in the girl whose case w^as recorded by Bazire, 

 (p. 653) or even one like that recorded by the writer at 

 p. 655, and yet such an Aphasic condition might have 

 been caused by a lesion far aw ay from the left third frontal 

 convolution. And if this were so, such cases might have 

 been quoted with much apparent effect against existing 

 doctrines in regard to ' cerebral localization.' 

 30 



