Brain regions essential for word comprehension: Drawing inferences from patients

Lesion-deficit association studies are important as they can reveal brain regions essential for specific functions, but sometimes appear to yield conflicting results. We aimed to show how pitfalls of lesions studies can be avoided, and converging results obtained, illustrating from studies of the role of posterior superior temporal gyrus in auditory word comprehension. We review published lesion studies on auditory comprehension and present new data from both acute and chronic stroke that address weaknesses in some previous studies. Results demonstrate how convergence of positive results from diverse lesion studies provides strong evidence for the role of a particular region in a given behavior.