Ambient echolalia in a patient with germinoma around the bilateral ventriculus lateralis: a case report.

Ambient echolalia is a rare condition with few reported cases. We report the case of a 20-year-old man with a germinoma around the bilateral ventriculus lateralis who exhibited ambient echolalia. Clinical features included instinctive grasp reaction and compulsive manipulation of tools in his right hand. Speech or mental deterioration has been cited as a cause of ambient echolalia, but neither dementia nor aphasia was present. We propose that ambient echolalia in our case could be interpreted as a disinhibition of pre-existing essentially intact motor subroutines due to damage of the medial frontal lobe.