MR tractography depicting damage to the arcuate fasciculus in a patient with conduction aphasia

Abstract

Yamada et al. reported MR tractography depicting damage to the left hemisphere arcuate fasciculus in association with presumed conduction aphasia in a patient who had sustained left hemisphere stroke.1 We concur with the authors’ findings that the left arcuate fasciculus is engulfed by the lesion, but disagree with the implications that this supports a specific diagnosis of conduction aphasia, and that the damage to arcuate fasciculus is necessarily associated with the aphasia in this patient. These distinctions are important from both heuristic and clinical perspectives. Distinguishing conduction aphasia from other forms of aphasia is a clinical process, not an imaging one, and the classic lesion locations of Geschwind’s disconnection model of …