Question

Briefly describe 10 symptoms associated with dysfunctions of the temporal
lobe and whether each listed symptom is associated mainly with right hemisphere, left hemisphere or
bilateral damage.

Answer 1

Symptoms associated with temporal lobe dysfunctions are:

1. Prosopagnosia i.e., the inability to recognise known faces though patient can identify the people by having their voices. Even he or she may not identify his or her own face by seeing in the mirror. This involves inferior temporal lobe bilaterally.

2. Achromatopsia (cerebral colour blindness), due to bilateral damage of temporal lobe.

3. Deficit in auditory discrimination learning due to lesion in superior temporal gyrus bilaterally. There will be a difficulty in distinguishing between complex sounds.

4. Deficit in visual discrimination learning due to lesion affecting inferior temporal lobe bilaterally. There will be difficulty in learning new visual discrimination tasks.

5. Visual memory is disturbed as previously learning tasks by visual means are not remembered. This is also due to inferior temporal lobe lesion bilaterally.

6. Affects verbal memory due to lesion of temporal lobe on left hemisphere.

7. Affects nonverbal memory due to lesion of temporal lobe on right hemisphere.

8. Deficits in short term memory due to lesions in lateral temporal cortex bilaterally.

9. Deficits in long term memory due to lessons of hippocampus and amygdala which are present in temporal lobe. It occurs due to bilateral damage.

10. Kluver-Bucy syndrome, Akash in persons who have undergone bilateral temporal lobectomy particularly involving amygdala following toxoplasmosis, herpes simplex and AIDS. The features of this syndrome includes:

• Placidity and inability to recognise object visually in spite of good vision.
• Pick all objects and explore them orally.
• Hypersexuality and hyperphagia.
• Fails to ignore peripheral stimuli and respond to every stimulus and explore everything.