Agraphia in dementia of the Alzheimer type
E. LaBarge, D. S. Smith, L. Dick and M. Storandt
Department of Neurology and Neurological Surgery, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, MO 63110.
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.
