Journal

The Japanese journal of neuropsychology

[Vol.28 No.3 contents]
Japanese/English

Full Text of this Article
in Japanese PDF (641K)
ArticleTitle Agraphia in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
Language J
AuthorList Noriyo Komori1), Ikuyo Fujita2), Ritsuo Hashimoto3)
Affiliation 1)Department of Speech Therapy, International University of Health and Welfare Hospital
2)International University of Health and Welfare Graduate School
3)Department of Neurology, International University of Health and Welfare Hospital
Publication Japanese Journal of Neuropsychology: 28 (3), 215-222, 2012
Received
Accepted
Abstract We investigated writing abilities of kana and kanji words in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) without apparent dementia (n=7).
All patients showed kana agraphia that was characterized by omission and substitution of kana letters. More errors appeared when they attempted to write kana words that contain special syllables such as yoo-on (CCV), cho-on (CV: or V:), and souk-on (CVQ or VQ).
Five of seven patients demonstrated kanji agraphia. Most of the erroneous kanji combinations were phonetically the same but semantically wrong with target words. Moreover, those patients with kanji agraphia showed difficulties in discriminating semantic similarity or disparity of paired sets of kanji words.
Single photon emission tomography demonstrated hyoperfusion in the left posterior frontal lobe in patients with kana agraphia while hypoperfusion of bilateral temporal poles was remarkable in patients with kanji agraphia.
From these observations, we suggest the followings; i) agraphia in patients with ALS is not rare but rather common; ii) in patients with ALS, kana and kanji agraphia seem to be associated with hypofunction of the left posterior frontal lobe and bilateral temporal poles respectively; and thus iii) analysis of kana and kanji writing abilities would provide clues as to the extent of degenerative processes in patients with ALS.
Keywords amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, kana agraphia, phoneme-grapheme conversion, surface-dysgraphia, brain single photon emission computed tomogtaphy image

Copyright © 2002 NEUROPSYCHOLOGY ASSOCIATION OF JAPAN All rights reserved
http://www.neuropsychology.gr.jp/