Auditory Disorder Following Bilateral Temporal Lobe Insult: Report of a Case
Audiologic data are presented for a patient with bilateral temporal lobe damage. Neuropathology examination of the brain at autopsy confirmed site of lesion. Audiologic results on this patient are contrasted to results obtained in 1969 by Jerger et al. on another patient with presumed bilateral lesions of the temporal lobe. The two patients showed striking similarities. Both experienced transient aphasia but no hearing problems after the first (left-sided) episode. Both reported severe hearing loss after the second (right-sided) episode. In both cases, the presumed sensitivity loss had essentially recovered within three months of the second episode. Both showed marked inability to recognize either single words or sentences. This profound deficit did not improve significantly, even under ideal listening conditions, in either patient during the period of study. In contrast to the striking similarities between the two patients, there was one significant difference. Whereas the 1969 patient could not localize sounds in space, the present patient’s sound localization ability was unimpaired. This finding seemed related to an interaural imbalance in the relation between loudness and signal duration. The 1969 patient had such an imbalance and could not localize effectively. The present patient did not have an imbalance and localized accurately. This finding indicates that impairment in sound localization is not an invariable concomitant of temporal lobe disease.