Fig. 7: Individual language and cognitive profiles for the three patients.

The vertical axis shows percentiles up to the 50th in all graphs. For each neuropsychological test, raw scores were transformed into percentiles on the basis of the corresponding normative studies (cited in Methods). For speech rate in the stroke story and cookie theft picture description, percentiles were calculated based on a group of healthy participants sampled from the project “Investigation of cortical surface patterns and their relation with speech metrics and performance in neuropsychological assessment in healthy participants” carried out at Aeginition Hospital in Athens, School of Medicine, Greece (research protocol approval ID: ΩΟΞΛ46Ψ98N2-7PN, July 2017). In a, performance of patient TA is represented with yellow. In b, performance of patient MM is represented with blue and in (c), performance of patient AA is represented with red. In (d), all profiles are shown for comparison. As one can observe in (c), the differential performance of AA in specific domains is manifested, i.e. impaired performance in tests involving selective retrieval vs. non-impaired performance in tests measuring other cognitive processes (points within the inner polygon correspond to impaired performance, below the 5th percentile). In (d), the combined profiles illustrate the differences in the performance of AA (red polygon) compared to MM (blue polygon) and TA (yellow polygon). While AA shows generally preserved language and cognitive abilities, his scores in measures requiring selective retrieval (i.e. PPVT-R, COWF-s, COWF-Ph) is significantly decreased, manifesting lower performance compared to MM and TA. However, the two posterior CVA patients despite their generally decreased performance, scored higher than AA in procedures requiring selective retrieval. Repetition cannot be visualized in the above graphs, because Tsapkini and colleagues²⁸ did not report percentiles for the BDAE repetition subscale alone. Nevertheless, we clarify in the text that repetition skills of AA were intact in contrast to the other two patients. ACi auditory comprehension index; BNT Boston Naming Test; PPVT-R Peabody vocabulary test-revised; COWF-s semantic subscale of Controlled Oral Word Fluency; COWF-ph phonemic subscale of Controlled Oral Word Fluency; DS-f Digit Span forward condition; DS-b Digit Span backward condition; StrSt Stroke Story speech rate (words/minute); CTP Cookie Theft Picture speech rate (words/minute).