Semantic memory in partial epilepsy: verbal and non-verbal deficits and neuroanatomical relationships

These results show that left TLE may cause semantic memory deficits involving verbal and visual information. Unlike the material-specific pattern of episodic memory, this pattern of impairment is in line with the view of an amodal semantic store in which all of the information about a thing overlaps. The semantic memory impairment may reflect damage in the lateral and mesial temporal lobe regions that impair neocortical functions in storing and retrieving information or hippocampal functions in processing meaningful stimuli.