Does left temporal lobectomy adversely affect the rate at which verbal material can be processed?

Fifty-three patients with unilateral temporal- or right frontal-lobe excision and 12 normal control (NC) subjects read words, sentences and stories presented at slow, normal or fast reading rates. No group differences were noted for the number of errors committed when reading single words or sentences. The left temporal-lobe group with large hippocampal excisions made more mistakes than the NC group when identifying false statements about the stories, but this increased error-rate occurred irrespective of the rate of stimulus presentation. These findings suggest that the critical feature affecting recall of stories after left temporal lobectomy is not the rate at which the information is presented but, rather, the amount of information that must be retained.