Proper Name Anomia After Left Temporal Subcortical Hemorrhage

We report here a patient with proper name anomia following subcortical hemorrhage in the left superior temporal gyrus. Despite the preserved ability to retrieve common names, the patient could not retrieve the names of people, countries, or racehorses, which he could recognize quite well. Semantic knowledge regarding people, countries, and racehorses was also preserved. In addition, the finding that phonological cueing was effective with preservation of the ability to point to photos corresponding to their names suggested that the lexicon of proper names was preserved in this patient. Thus, the output lexicon appeared to be partially disconnected from semantic knowledge. This rare and limited lesion suggested that the superior temporal gyrus plays an important role in connecting semantic knowledge and the output lexicon.