The Japanese journal of neuropsychology

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ArticleTitle	A case of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis presented with grammatical and phonological impairments by using the communication aid DenNoSin
Language	J
AuthorList	Itaru Tamura¹⁾⁴⁾, Tomofumi Osawa²⁾, Shinsuke Hamada⁴⁾, Toshiyuki Tuboi³⁾, Kunio Tashiro⁴⁾
Affiliation	¹⁾Department of Communication Disorders, School of Psychological Science, Health Sciences University of Hokkaido ²⁾Department of Rehabilitation, Abashiri Neurosurgical and Rehabilitation Hospital ³⁾Department of Neurosurgery, Abashiri Neurosurgical and Rehabilitation Hospital ⁴⁾Hokuyukai Neurology Hospital
Publication	Japanese Journal of Neuropsychology: 26 (3), 242-249, 2010
Received	Dec 8, 2009
Accepted	Feb 4, 2010
Abstract	We reported a 65-year-old right-handed Japanese woman with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), having severe bulbar, and generalized limb paralysis. She had been using the communication aid DenNoSin for two years. She showed a mild cognitive impairment and anosognosia. Due to the loss of her speech and writing, it was impossible to determine if she had aphasia. Because she preserved her auditory comprehension and word finding, it was inferred that her aphasia was mild even if she was aphasic. The syntactic and phonologic errors were found by using DenNoSin. The most conspicuous sign of her writing disturbances was the substitution when she scanned kana words and short sentences. Her grammatical disorder was omission and selection error of postpositional particle, and also she showed impairment of the syntactic decision task. Therefore, her disability in writing by using DenNoSin. seemed to be caused by agraphia and the grammatical impairment. These results suggested that the syntactic and phonologic errors were not caused by movement disorder with writing, but due to the selective language disorders in ALS.
Keywords	amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, grammatical disability, phonological error, communication aid DenNoSin