Speech disorders in right-hemisphere stroke

Clinical practice shows that right-hemisphere cerebral strokes are often accompanied by one speech disorder or another. The aim of the present work was to analyze published data addressing speech disorders in right-sided strokes. Questions of the lateralization of speech functions are discussed, with particular reference to the role of the right hemisphere in speech activity and the structure of speech pathology in righthemisphere foci. Clinical variants of speech disorders, such as aphasia, dysprosody, dysarthria, mutism, and stutter are discussed in detail. Types of speech disorders are also discussed, along with the possible mechanisms of their formation depending on the locations of lesions in the axis of the brain (cortex, subcortical structures, stem, cerebellum) and focus size. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.