GRAVITA SENSORI MOTRICE ED ESTENSIONE DEI FOCOLAI SCINTIGRAFICI NELLE LESIONI EMISFERICHE FOCALI

Fifty four right handed patients with positive brain scan were given a standard battery of tests of the sensory motor functions. All the patients had a lesion limited either to the left (N=27) or to the right hemisphere (N=27) and a fairly delimited brain scan image. A score ranging from 0 to 3 points was given to the motor defect, to the somatosensory impairment and to the visual field defect, and the sum of the scores so obtained was taken as a global index of Sensory Motor Impairment. No significant difference can be found between the volumes of the right and of the left hemispheric lesions, even if, contrary to the hypothesis, there is a trend of the left lesions to be larger than the right ones. The relation between global Sensory Motor Impairment and brain lesions size is significant at the .05 level in the total group of brain damaged patients, but does not reach the level of statistical significance in the right or in the left hemispheric group. Some implications of these findings are discussed.