Temporal Lobe

These lobes allow a person to tell one smell from another and one sound from another. They also help in sorting new information and are believed to be responsible for short-term memory. There are two temporal lobes, on left and right sides, located around the level of the ears

• Right Lobe — Mainly involved in visual memory (i.e., memory for pictures and faces).
• Left Lobe — Mainly involved in verbal memory (i.e., memory for words and names)

Disorders of Auditory Perception

• Speech perception - Discrimination of speech & temporal order of sounds impaired
• Prosody (tone) of speech faulty

Disorders of Music Perception - Discrimination of melodies

Visual Perceptual Disorders - Facial recognition (prosopagnosia)

Disturbance of Visual & Auditory Input Selection

• Short-term (working) memory impairment
• Judgments about recency

Organization & Categorization of Words & Pictures

• Impaired categorization
• Lowered fluency in citing examples of categorical materials

Difficulties using contextual information

• Difficulty extracting information from environment
• Impaired use of cues (visual & social)

Memory Impairment

• Complete anterograde amnesia following bilateral removal of medial temporal lobes (including hippocampus & amygdala)
• Difficulty recalling information (L = verbal & R = nonverbal {faces, tunes, drawings})

Temporal Lobe Personality

• Emphasis on trivia and the small details of daily life in temporal lobe epilepsy
• Egocentricity, pedantic (teacher-like) speech, perseveration (“stickiness”) in speech, paranoia, religious preoccupations, tendency to aggressive outbursts (especially after right temporal lobectomy)

References

Kolb & Whishaw (2003), pp. 376-387