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Abstract

More than a century has passed since Cotard (1868) reported that early or congenital left-hemisphere damage does not lead to aphasia. Confirmatory observations showing that aphasia acquired after a child has learned speech is less severe and less permanent than in adults contributed to the widely held view that the young brain is more resilient to insults than the mature brain (cf. Guttman, 1942). However, this view has recently come under criticism for being accepted as “unquestioned dogma” (St. James-Roberts, 1979). Focusing on age at injury as an explanatory variable de-emphasizes a number of equally important interactive variables such as the functional maturation of the involved tissue, age at assessment, testing procedures, and experiential factors related to both the preinsult and recovery periods (St. James-Roberts, 1979)

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Levin, H.S., Ewing-Cobbs, L., Benton, A.L. (1984). Age and Recovery from Brain Damage. In: Scheff, S.W. (eds) Aging and Recovery of Function in the Central Nervous System. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2705-9_9

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