The Japanese journal of neuropsychology

Full Text of this Article
in Japanese PDF (1084K)

ArticleTitle	The preservation in the reading aloud of proper nouns written in Kanji in a case of alexia with agraphia
Language	J
AuthorList	Ryoichi Usugi¹⁾²⁾, Kazumasa Kuniyoshi¹⁾, Shogo Ishiuchi²⁾
Affiliation	¹⁾Yuaikai Nanbu Hospital ²⁾Department of Neurosurgery, Graduate School of Medicine University of the Ryukyus
Publication	Japanese Journal of Neuropsychology: 31 (2), 144-154, 2015
Received	Apr 3, 2012
Accepted	Jan 28, 2015
Abstract	Several studies have shown that patients of global aphasia comprehend proper nouns better than common nouns. However, as far as we know, there is little research for the comparison with proper nouns and common nouns for alexia with agraphia patients. We reported a 72 years old patient of alexia with agraphia which merged ventral simultanagnosia after the cerebral infarction of left postcentral, supramarginal and temporo-occipital gyri in addition to hypoperfusion of bilateral medial occipital, left temporo-parietal, and left fusiform regions. We examined for reading ability with each part of speech such as common nouns (kanji and kana words), proper nouns (kanji words), verbs and kana pseudowords. The patient showed difficulty in the reading aloud task and auditory-character matching task regarding as general common nouns, verbs, kana pseudowords. On the other hand, proper nouns were results significantly better than the common nouns (p<0.001). Our results revealed that proper nouns are involved in the processing of the correspondence between the referent and phonemes as the whole letter words than the processing in conformity with the character phonological conversion rules. It seems to be different from the path through the left parietal-occipital region.
Keywords	alexia with agraphia, ventral simultanagnosia, proper nouns, phonological processing