The relationship of brain-tissue loss volume and lesion location to cognitive deficit

We examined the relationship of preinjury intelligence, a lesion-severity variable (brain-tissue loss volume), and lesion location to the persistence of cognitive deficits in Vietnam veterans with penetrating brain wounds. Using stepwise multiple linear regression procedures, we found that preinjury intelligence predicted a significant amount of the variance on postinury cognitive testing, being a better predictor for tests requiring a number of complementary cognitive processes (e.g., intelligence tests) than for tests measuring a specific cognitive process (e.g., face recognition). Brain-tissue volume loss was found to play a larger role when a global cognitive measure was used, but a smaller role when a specific cognitive process was measured. Finally, lesion location was shown to be a significant predictor of performance only for specific cognitive processes. Nevertheless, preinjury intelligence/education appears to play an even larger role in postinjury performance than either brain-tissue loss volume or a particular structural loss.