Brain and Cognition 39, 187–201 (1999) Article ID brcg.1999.1077, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on Paradoxical Facilitation of a Free Recall of Nonwords in Persons with Traumatic Brain Injury Aaro Toomela,* Tiiu Tomberg,² Anu Orasson,² Arvo Tikk,² and Mari No ˜mm* *Department of Psychology, and ²Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia Brain damage is usually associated with behavioral deficits. However, there is an increasing amount of evidence that lesions of some brain regions are associated with improvements instead of impairments of certain behaviors. We report the re- sults of a study of free recall performance in subjects with traumatic brain injury. One-fourth of the subjects displayed above-normal performance in recall of non- words. No such facilitation was found with nine lists of words.  1999 Academic Press INTRODUCTION Lesion studies in animals have demonstrated that relations between brain damage and behavioral deficit are not unequivocal. There is convincing evi- dence from animal studies that, depending on the lesion location and the behaviors measured, large lesions may be followed by much less behavioral deficits than smaller lesions (Irle, 1987, 1990; Irle & Markowitsch, 1983, 1984, 1990; Meunier, Hadfield, Bachevalier, & Murray, 1996; Sprague, 1966). Moreover, lesions of some brain regions were shown to be associated with above normal functioning instead of impairment of certain learning be- haviors in animals (Irle, 1990). The better functional recovery or sparing in the presence of larger lesions is also well documented in humans (Irle, 1987). However, findings that direct or indirect neural damage may result in facilitation of behavioral functions have been relatively undervalued or ignored in human brain–behavioral re- search literature. In the recent review of such findings Kapur (1996) analyzed evidence for functional facilitation both in humans and in animals. He dem- We thank Ju ¨ri Allik, Hans J. Markowitsch, Larry R. Squire, and Endel Tulving for the information they shared with us; Piret Paatsi and Kristina Seepter for help with data collection; and Peter Farrell for his advice. Supported by the Estonian Science Foundation Grants 292 and 629. Correspondence and reprint requests should be addressed to Aaro Toomela, at the Department of Psychology, University of Tartu, 78 Tiigi Street, Tartu EE 50410, Estonia. 187 0278-2626/99 $30.00 Copyright  1999 by Academic Press All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.