A serial study of regional cerebral blood flow deficits in patients with left anterior thalamic infarction: anatomical and neuropsychological correlates.

Thalamic damage is associated with a variety of neuropsychological dysfunctions, as well as strategic infarct dementia. However, only a limited number of reports in the medical literature have discussed the correlation between the clinical findings and the specific functional changes observed on images. We investigated the neuropsychological correlation of the regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) deficits in four patients with left anterior thalamic infarction within two days after their stroke. All of the patients showed anterograde amnesia on the verbal memory test. Some dysexecutive features were present such as decreased word fluency and an impaired performance on the Stroop test. A decreased rCBF was observed in the left supramarginal gyrus, the superior temporal gyrus, the middle and inferior frontal gyri, and the medial dorsal and anterior nuclei of the left thalamus. The changes of rCBF may have been due to remote suppression by the interruption of the thalamo-cortical circuit that connects the anterior thalamic nucleus and various cortical areas. These initial findings remained unchanged even on the follow-up studies.