Search PubMed⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search PubMed

Results for “Agraphia”

Search indexed PubMed citations on genomics, clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health. Explore titles, authors and supplied subject terms, then open the PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1989

Lexical agraphia in the Japanese language. Pure agraphia for Kanji due to left posteroinferior temporal lesions.

A new syndrome of 'pure agraphia for Kanji' is described in 3 Japanese subjects with lesions in the left posteroinferior temporal region. Kanji (ideogram or morphogram) can be compared with orthographically irregular or ambiguous words in some European languages, since it is impossible to write Kanji characters unless each one of them is learned and memorized. In contrast, Kana (phonogram or syllabogram) words are comparable with orthographically regular words or nonsense words, because the Kana writing system depends on strict phonological rules (almost one-to-one correspondence between syllable and syllabogram). We conclude that 'lexical agraphia' reported in European languages can also be observed in the Japanese language where it is expressed as 'pure agraphia for Kanji'. 'Lexical agraphia' is a useful concept with general application regardless of language system.

Aged↗
PubMed1991

Phonolexical agraphia. Superimposition of acquired lexical agraphia on developmental phonological dysgraphia.

Study of neuropsychological sequelae of a focal acquired brain lesion may bring out and help delineate the features of a compensated developmental language disorder and its anatomical substrate. A left-handed man with a history of phonological developmental dyslexia and dysgraphia learned in early adulthood to read and write using a lexical system. Following a small posterior right parietal infarct when aged 56 yrs he developed a severe agraphia displaying features of phonological dysgraphia with impaired segmentation and features of lexical agraphia. Writing was severely impaired for all classes of word and nonword stimuli but his errors did not resemble those attributable to a deficit in the system responsible for the short-term storage of the graphemic representation of a word (graphemic output buffer). These observations imply that an acquired lexical agraphia has been superimposed on his developmental phonological dysgraphia, resulting in a combined or 'phonolexical' agraphia.

Agraphia↗
PubMed1977

[Transient agraphia due to a left parieto-occipital glioma in a right-handed patient: amnesic or "pure" agraphia? (author's transl)].

The authors investigate a case of agraphia induced by a left parieto-occipital tumor (glioma) in a right-handed 67 year-old patient. After three successive neuropsychological examinations it still proves immensely difficult to determine whether defects of spontaneous writing, dictation and copy are due to apraxia, alexia or motor disturbances. The authors discuss whether the clinical findings indicate a "pure agraphia" syndrome or "amnesic agraphia". Finally, problems of aetiology and lesional localisation are examined in the light of the literature. (Acta neurol. belg., 1977, 77, 321-330).

Adrenal Cortex Hormones↗
PubMed1987

[Aphasia without amusia in a blind organist. Verbal alexia-agraphia without musical alexia-agraphia in braille].

A 77 year old right handed male was blind since the age of 2. He presented with an infarction involving the territory of the left middle cerebral artery involving the temporal and the inferior parietal lobes. He had learned to read and write language as well as read and write music in braille, ultimately becoming a famous organist and composer. There were no motor or sensory deficits. Wernicke's aphasia with jargonaphasia, major difficulty in repetition, anomia and a significant comprehension deficit without word deafness was present; verbal alexia and agraphia in braille were also present. There was no evidence of amusia. He could execute in an exemplary fashion pieces of music for the organ in his repertory as well as improvise. All his musical capabilities: transposition, modulation, harmony, rythm, were preserved. The musical notation in braille remained intact: he could read by touch and play unfamiliar scores, he could also read and sing the musical notes, he could copy and write a score. Nine months after the stroke his aphasia remained unchanged. Nevertheless he composed pieces for the organ which were published. Such data highly suggest the independence of linguistic and musical competences, defined as the analysis and organization of sounds according to the rules of music. This independence in an extremely talented musician leads to a discussion of the role of the right hemisphere in the anatomical-functional processes at the origin of musical competence. The use of braille in which the same constellations of dots correspond either to letters of the alphabet or musical notes supports the independence between language and music.

Aged↗
PubMed1992

The agraphia of Alzheimer's disease.

Hypothesizing that agraphia in Alzheimer's disease (AD) reflects disturbances in multiple cognitive domains, we evaluated writing samples from 33 patients meeting strict criteria for probable AD. We found agraphia to be common on a standard narrative writing task. When compared with 41 education- and age-matched normal control subjects, AD patients had significantly lower writing scores, wrote significantly fewer words, mentioned significantly fewer categories of information, and were significantly more likely to make writing errors. On stepwise regression procedures, neuropsychological measures of visuoperceptual impairment and disease severity were the strongest predictors of agraphia, but other analyses indicated that measures of language, praxis, and attention could also contribute significantly to agraphia. On two writing tasks, we failed to confirm the previous contention that agraphia is a marker for familial AD. However, there was a highly significant interaction between family history, oral naming, and writing: patients with nonfamilial AD, but not those with a family history of dementia, showed a strong correlation between naming and writing performance. We conclude that agraphia in AD can be variously determined and that agraphia is not a reliable marker for familial disease.

Aged↗
PubMed1988

Developmental phonological and lexical agraphia in adults.

Many cases of agraphia from acquired cerebral lesions may be divided into two groups, phonological and lexical, suggesting two dissociable spelling systems. Studies of developmental agraphia have described some children who have spelling patterns similar to acquired phonological or lexical agraphia. This study analyzed spelling results from 22 adolescent and adult subjects with developmental agraphia (DA) and compared them to those from control subjects and subjects with acquired agraphia (AA). On the basis of spelling ability, subjects with DA could be divided into two groups. Analysis of the profile of spelling abilities indicated that the two groups of subjects with DA were almost indistinguishable from the two groups of subjects with AA, phonological and lexical. This supports the contention that DA in adults may be divided into phonological and lexical groups and further supports the two-system hypothesis for linguistic agraphia.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1988

Alexia with agraphia due to the left posterior inferior temporal lobe lesion--neuropsychological analysis and its pathogenetic mechanisms.

We report three cases of alexia with agraphia due to the left posterior inferior temporal lesions. In Case 1, the reading disability was more prominent in the use of Kana than in the use of Kanji, which is similar to previously reported cases of alexia with agraphia due to angular gyrus lesion. In Cases 2 and 3, by contrast, the reading disability was more prominent in the use of Kanji than in the use of Kana. In spontaneous writing and dictation, the disability was more pronounced in the use of Kanji compared with the use of Kana. In each of the three cases, the CT scan and positron emission tomography showed a localized lesion in the lower part of the left posterior temporal lobe. A typical form of an alexia with agraphia could be caused not only by the left angular lesion but also by the left posterior inferior temporal lesion. We discuss the neuropsychological analysis and pathogenetic mechanisms of alexia with agraphia due to the left posterior inferior temporal lesion in the comparison of alexia with agraphia caused by the left angular lesion.

Aged↗
PubMed1987

Selective Kana agraphia: a case report.

We present a Japanese man with selective Kana (phonogram) agraphia as a sequela of two cerebral infarctions in a part of the left angular gyrus and its adjoining posterior superior temporal gyrus and the left corona radiata. The agraphia of this patient showed the following features: (1) His writing difficulty was greater for Kana than for Kanji (ideogram) when a word was polysyllabic. (2) Kana errors consisted of perseveration and substitution with another letter, resulting in jargon agraphia. (3) This jargon agraphia often contained a correct number of letters for a target word. Based on these findings, we speculate that the basic defect of this agraphia lies in the process of converting an acoustic word image into a Kana motor grapheme sequence.

Agraphia↗
PubMed1988

[The difference in writing disorders in primary agraphia and congenital dyslexia and their clinical relevance].

If after a brain injury reading and writing disturbances persist, the question is: primary agraphia or writing disorders due to dyslexia? If the anamnesis cannot answer this question, a decision is possible by means of four essential differences between writing disorders on the background of primary agraphia and those associated with dyslexia: 1. Agraphic persons correct their mistakes, dyslectics do not. 2. The word formations (paragraphias) due to primary agraphia do not bear close phonetical resemblances, whereas word formations by dyslectic persons are plainly phonetical. 3. Agraphics persevere, dyslectics do not. 4. In primary agraphia, the patient will also show difficulties in writing numbers; in a dyslectic disorder, he/she will not.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1989

[Pure agraphia. Apropos of 2 cases].

Pure agraphia is a disorder of written language without aphasia, alexia or apraxia. Its existence has long been disputed. We report 2 cases due to a left parietal hematoma. In the first patient, with a deep precuneate lesion, agraphia included disorders in handwriting and orthographic problems in copying or writing from dictation with the two hands. The second patient, with a lesion of the postero-inferior part of the left angular gyrus, made errors in choice and combination of letters during dictation, whereas these same letters were well-written and copying was normal. The first cases of pure agraphia were ascribed to frontal lesions and then confusional states. Current opinion tends to implicate parietal lesions of various types: superior or inferior, internal or external. Findings in the present 2 cases and those reported indicate that pure parietal agraphia is heterogeneous.

Aged↗
PubMed1987

[A case of alexia with agraphia following left occipital lobe].

Since Dejerine reported cases of alexia with agraphia in 1891 and of pure alexia in 1892, it is generally said that the former may occur due to the lesion of the left angular gyrus and the latter due to that of the medial inferior area of the left occipital lobe. In this article, we reported a case of alexia with agraphia who had the main lesion in the medial inferior area of the occipital lobe of the left hemisphere. A 62-year-old right-handed male showed alexia with agraphia. CT scan and single photon emission CT revealed the main lesion in the medial occipital area on the left side. Alexia with agraphia of the patient was characterized as follows: with regard to reading, though his recognition of forms as letter was nearly spared, he could neither read letters or words nor differentiate Kana- from Kanji-letters. Paralexic errors included confusion of Kana and Kanji. He manifested no kinesthetic facilitation in reading. Regarding writing, his disturbances were more severe in Kanji-writing, but there were paragraphia and difficulty of letter-form evocation even in Kana-writing. He could not write spontaneously or to dictation. His copying of letters was also disturbed. Since it is said that there is no difference between Kana- and Kanji-disturbance in Japanese pure alexics, an aspect of alexia of the patient may be common to pure alexia.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Agraphia↗
PubMed1992

Agraphia in dementia of the Alzheimer type.

This study describes graphic errors made in writing a simple sentence in 368 healthy older adults and individuals in different stages of dementia of the Alzheimer type. Errors of agraphia were present in both healthy and demented people and, in general, increased with the severity of dementia. The errors of agraphia were not correlated with measures of aphasia or psychometric measures of language and motor performance. Writing skill may represent procedural memory, and agraphia errors indicate alterations in long-term memory in dementia of the Alzheimer type.

Aged↗
PubMed1988

Letter imagery deficits in a case of pure apraxic agraphia.

Pure apraxic agraphia is a condition in which motor writing is impaired but limb praxis and nonmotor writing (typing, anagram letters) are preserved. This condition is believed to result from disruption of a parietal lobe graphemic area which generates grapheme representations used to program motor-writing patterns. We report a single case of pure apraxic agraphia in which defective letter imagery was evident. Results of writing and imagery evaluations suggest that the graphemic area may be responsible for generating letter images. In this respect, clinical evaluation of letter imagery abilities in cases of apraxic agraphia may be useful in identifying subtypes of the disorder resulting in a better understanding of the neuropsychological process involved in writing.

Agraphia↗
PubMed1989

Written spelling agraphia.

When a disorder of single word writing is seen in conjunction with preserved oral spelling and intact written grapheme formation ("written spelling agraphia"), the deficit may be presumed to lie somewhere between letter choice and written motor output. Two potential deficits are considered: (1) visual letter codes are not activated properly and (2) the information contained within properly activated visual letter codes fails to reach intact graphic motor patterns. Two patients with written spelling agraphia were each given a series of tests aimed at distinguishing between the two possibilities. Results suggest that the written spelling agraphia seen in these two patients arises from different underlying deficits. The results are discussed in terms of the patients' CT scan lesion sites, which were markedly different.

Agraphia↗
PubMed1992

Lesion localization of phonological agraphia.

Phonological agraphia is a neurolinguistically specific profile of spelling impairment. It is characterized by an impairment in spelling pronounceable pseudowords ('sild') and by an impairment in spelling real words related to their familiarity, length, and often, part of speech (Shallice, 1981; Roeltgen, 1985; Bub & Chertkow, 1988). We report two cases of phonological agraphia, each with a different lesion profile. Analysis of the small number of published cases that include lesion data, plus our own cases, suggests that phonological agraphia can be produced by lesions in a wide range of perisylvian cortical regions that have in common some role in central phonological processes.

Agraphia↗
PubMed1990

Pure agraphia of kanji due to thrombosis of the Labbé vein.

A case is described of a 56 year old Japanese male with pure agraphia of kanji (the Japanese morphograms) due to haemorrhagic infarction of the left temporal lobe caused by the rare condition of cortical vein thrombosis of Labbé. Writing kanji was severely impaired without disturbed consciousness, aphasia or apraxia. On the other hand, writing kana (the Japanese syllabograms), and reading kanji and kana were almost intact. This suggests that the process of writing kanji involves a different pathway from that of reading kanji in the left temporal lobe. Pure agraphia of kanji is considered to be similar to lexical agraphia in Indo-European languages, in that the writing system with a poor or irregular phoneme-grapheme transformation is impaired by the left temporal lesion. This case indicates the necessity for considering thrombosis of the Labbé vein when a subcortical haematoma is detected in a temporal lobe on computed tomography of the brain.

Agraphia↗
PubMed1986

[Alexia without agraphia: a clinico-tomographic study].

The authors report the clinical findings and CT-scanning results in two cases of alexia without agraphia and review the literature on this subject. Both patients had extensive infarction in the territory supplied by the left posterior cerebral artery and developed severe alexia without agraphia, right hemianopia without color-anomia and one of them presented with transient verbal memory difficulties. In both cases the evolution was very good, with total regression of the alexia after 17 months in the first patient and almost complete recovery after there months in the second one. The authors comment on the causes and possible mechanisms of the alexias, especially of the alexia without agraphia, and suggest that every patient with right hemianopic disturbances due to occlusion of the left posterior cerebral artery be thoroughly studied from a neurological point of view, so that this syndrome can be detected since, notwithstanding its recognized rarity, it seems highly probable that many cases have been overlooked as a result of incomplete examination of the patients.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

[Two cases of pure agraphia developed after thalamic hemorrhage].

We have observed two cases suffered from left thalamic hemorrhage, that showed pure agraphia. The first case was a 49 year-old, right handed male, who was educated through 11th grade. The CT scan revealed left thalamic hemorrhage with ventricular casting. The second case was a 48 year- old, right handed male, who was educated through 9th grade. The CT scan revealed left thalamic hemorrhage which is smaller than that of the first case, without intraventricular rupture. With a standard neuropsychological evaluation performed at chronic stage, neither cases showed oral language disorder, apraxia and agnosia. On the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, total IQ of the first and second case were 71 and 80 respectively. Each case developed severe writing disorder. The first case showed severe neographism and scrawl, mild literal paragraphia, which were frequently accompanied with perseveration. The second case showed literal paragraphia and no response, but neographism was not detected. The common characteristics of both cases were; 1) intact copy writing. 2) discrepancy between difficulty in writing "Kana" and that in "Kanji". 3) anosognosia of agraphia. The cerebral blood flow study by 123I-IMP Single photon emission computed tomography revealed low perfusion of the left cerebral hemisphere in both cases. From these findings, we concluded that dysfunction of the left cerebral cortex is responsible for producing agraphia in these cases.

Agraphia↗