Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics vol. 45 (2), 2009
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Item NEW TESTS FOR LANGUAGE MAPPING WITH INTRAOPERATIVE ELECTRICAL STIMULATION OF THE BRAIN TO PRESERVE LANGUAGE IN INDIVIDUALS WITH TUMORS AND EPILEPSY: A PRELIMINARY FOLLOW-UP STUDY(Versita Ltd., de Gruyter, 2009) Połczyńska, MonikaIntraoperative Electrical Stimulation (IES) of the brain is performed to localise and spare lan- guage functional areas before extraction of brain tissue in patients with tumors and epilepsy. The procedure is very precise and highly effective. Yet, it is argued that language tests used during IES are too limited. This article presents new language tests that have a potential of minimising post-operative risk to language function. It is a continuation of a previous study (Połczyńska 2008) and it contains extended versions of earlier presented tests, as well as new tests designed in three sets: (1) Grammar-focused tests for the dominant left hemisphere, (2) Non-dominant right- hemisphere tests and (3) Tests for the subcortex. To assure maximum safety and efficiency of the tests before they are used during IES for the first time, it is suggested that they are first used with patients with intractable epilepsy who have a multielectrode subdural grid implanted onto their cortex to trace the source of seizures. The subdural grid gives a chance to carry out an electrical stimulation of those areas of the cortex which are covered with a grid. This type of language mapping is carried out in a ward and is not time-limited.Item Idiom processing in aphasic patients(Versita Ltd., de Gruyter, 2009) Morawski, MarcinThe aim of the present paper is to provide insight into the issue of idiom comprehension in pa- tients who are in the process of recovery from the syndrome of aphasia. Research in figurative language comprehension has seen a robust development in the recent decades. However, it has not been until quite recently that psycholinguists began to delve into the aspect of metaphorical language comprehension in brain damaged populations. It was observed that even though the ability to produce and understand language is recovered in the majority of patients with head trauma, the impairment of some aspects of comprehension may protract. The understanding of idioms, metaphors, similes and proverbs, due to their specific, non-literal character, has been evi- denced to pose a serious problem to aphasic patients, as they fail to decipher the figurative mean- ing of the utterance, and, instead, tend to process the message literally (Papagno et al. 2004). In the present study, three patients who suffered from aphasic disorder were tested for com- prehension of idioms by means of two multiple choice tasks. The obtained results corroborated the hypothesis that patients who are in the process of recovery from aphasia encounter various pitfalls in the comprehension of idiomatic language. Predominantly, they exhibit an inclination to choose the erroneous, literal paraphrases of the presented idioms over their correct, idiomatic counterparts. The present paper aims at accounting for the reasons underlying such a tendency.