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Electric brain activity and clinical status were studied in children with Landau-Kleffner syndrome. The paper covers 21 cases of the disease in patients aged from 2 years 11 months to 16 years in whom speech disorders and convulsive episodes varied in onset. A characteristic EEG pattern was recorded in the majority of the examinees. It comprised slow high-amplitude spike-and-wave complexes localized primarily in the temporal regions, more frequently on the left side. Clinically, the children belonged to 2 groups: epileptic aphasia and epileptic alalia patients. The latter had more significant EEG changes attributed to earlier onset of this disease. The data obtained showed the importance of combined clinical and EEG investigations in the diagnosis of Landau-Kleffner syndrome.

Clinical and tomographic examinations of 40 patients with aphasia developed after an ischemic stroke were carried out. In more than half of them no correlation between the aphasia gravity and character on the one hand, and the size and localization of the ischemic focus (or foci) in the brain on the other was noted. With similar character and gravity of the speech disorder the size and localization of the ischemic foci may be different, ad vice versa. It has been shown that the interrelations between the focal pathology of the brain and the character and gravity of speech disorders are very complicated. One should take into consideration the possibility of individual organization of the speech functions, the degree of the speech activity automatism before the disease, and the state of the cerebrovascular system as a whole.

Thirty-seven patients (27 with ischemic and 10 with hemorrhagic strokes) were examined. The patients were followed up for 1 to 5 years. Clinical and neuropsychologic examinations over time and computer-aided tomography of the brain were carried out. The syndrome of sensomotor aphasia was shown to be heterogeneous. Two variants of the syndrome were specified which differed by the clinical manifestations of aphasia, the time-course of recovery of various speech functions, and the localization of affection. The correlation between the recovery of individual speech functions and the cerebral blood supply is discussed.

Main concepts of aphasia are analysed. It is shown that each of them emphasizes analytically certain aspects of this complicated problem. It is maintained that the one-sided view on this problem is overcome historically in the context of developing dialectico-materialistic understanding of the scientific psychophysiological problem. It is proven that the intergrative methods of investigating speech functions are, of the greatest diagnostic value.