Pure alexia in Japanese and agraphia without alexia in kanji. The ability dissociation between reading and writing in kanji vs kana
H. Mochizuki and R. Ohtomo
Department of Neurology, Tohoku University School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan.
A 60-year-old right-handed Japanese man with infarction of the left
occipital lobe and inferior temporal gyrus initially showed pure alexia in
kana and kanji. Later, though pure alexia in kana persisted, his kanji
reading improved markedly, but with little improvement of kanji writing. We
speculate that different pathways are involved in kanji reading and
writing. Wernicke's area and its surrounding left middle temporal lobe
might play the most important role for kanji reading when visual
information is transmitted by any pathway. The pathway from Wernicke's area
to the left occipital lobe via the middle and inferior temporal pathway may
be indispensable for kanji writing. We postulate "agraphia without alexia
in kanji" due to left inferior temporal subcortical damage.
