Language disturbances associated to insular and entorhinal damage: study of a patient affected by herpetic encephalitis

The herpes simplex encephalitis (HSE) patient reported in this study presented a left hemisphere lesion limited to the left insula and to the left anterior parahippocampal region. The patient was followed longitudinally, focusing on the aphasia type, the language recovery, and the integrity of semantic representations. The language deficit was of fluent type, without phonological impairment, and showed a good but incomplete recovery after four months. A semantic impairment was possible at the onset, but recovered quickly and did not present a disproportionate impairment of living categories.