Preserved speech abilities and compensation following prefrontal damage

Lesions to left frontal cortex in humans produce speech production impairments (nonfluent aphasia). These impairments vary from subject to subject and performance on certain speech production tasks can be relatively preserved in some patients. A possible explanation for preservation of function under these circumstances is that areas outside left prefrontal cortex are used to compensate for the injured brain area. We report here a direct demonstration of preserved language function in a stroke patient (LF1) apparently due to the activation of a compensatory brain pathway. We used functional brain imaging with positron emission tomography (PET) as a basis for this study.