摘要：The fiinctional role of the uncinate fesciculus (UNC) is still a matter of debate. Despite its well established role in memory, supported by several neuropsychological and neuroimaging data (Agosta et al., 2010; Diehl et al., 2008; Fujie et al.9 2008; Yasmin et al., 2008), the UNC has been recently shown to be irrelevant in language tasks (Dufeu et al.，2009). In this study we fiirther investigate the UNC role, by administering a series of neuropsychological tasks to 44 patients submitted to awake surgery for removal of a left either frontal or temporal glioma. In 18 patients, UNC removal was performed as well. Neuropsychological examination assessed verbal and spatial short- and long-term memory, spatial cognition, divided attention, apraxia, lexical production (femous fece naming, object naming and verbal fluency on categorical cue) and language comprehension. Patients with or without UNC removal were compared at diferent time intervals: pre-surgery(T 1 ), immediately afier surgery (T2), and at a three-months follow-up (T3).
