Effect of Frontal Lobe Traumatic Brain Injury on Sentence Comprehension and Working Memory

Background: This study was conducted to examine the sentence comprehension and working memory in individuals with mild and moderate frontal lobe traumatic brain injury (TBI) and determine the relationship between them.Methods: Participants included 18 patients with mild TBI, 17 patients with moderate TBI and 18 non-TBI individuals. The digit span subtest of the Wechsler intelligence scale-IV (WISC-IV) and a N-back test were used to evaluate working memory. Moreover, the syntactic comprehension subtest of Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT) was used for sentence comprehension assessment.Results: The results showed that patients withmild and moderate TBI had a lower performance in comprehension of non-canonical sentences and working memory compared to the non-TBI group. There was also a significant correlation between sentence comprehension and working memory in the TBI groups.Conclusions: Sentence comprehension and working memory in TBI patients with frontal lobe damage are significantly lower than that of the non-TBI group, which may lead to some daily communication problems in these individuals.

Effect of Frontal Lobe Traumatic Brain Injury on Sentence Comprehension and Working Memory Keywords:

Traumatic Brain Injury , Sentence Comprehension , working memory , Frontal lobe