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Chinese Medical Journal Jul 2016Patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) manifest progressive decline in writing abilities. Most studies on agraphia in AD have been performed in the alphabetic system,...
BACKGROUND
Patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) manifest progressive decline in writing abilities. Most studies on agraphia in AD have been performed in the alphabetic system, such as English. However, these findings may not be applicable to other written language systems. The unique features of the Chinese written script could affect the patterns of agraphia in Chinese AD patients. The aim of this study was to explore the features of writing errors in Chinese patients with AD and amnestic mild cognitive impairment (a-MCI), as well as to study the relationship between their writing errors and neuropsychological functions.
METHODS
In this study, we performed an observational study in a group of subjects including 17 AD patients, 14 patients with a-MCI, and 16 elderly healthy controls. We analyzed the writing errors in these subjects and also studied the relationship between their writing errors and neuropsychological functions.
RESULTS
Our study showed that in patients whose mother tongue is Chinese, writing ability was comparatively well preserved in the MCI phase but significantly impaired when the disease progressed to the stage of AD. The writing errors showed corresponding increase with the severity of cognition decline, both in the types of errors and rate of occurrence. Analysis of the writing errors showed that word substitution and unintelligible words were the most frequent error types that occurred in all the three study groups. The occurrence rate of unintelligible words was significantly higher in the AD group compared with the a-MCI group (P = 0.024) and control group (P = 0.018). In addition, the occurrence rates of word substitution were also significantly higher in AD (P = 0.013) and a-MCI groups (P = 0.037) than that of control group. However, errors such as totally no response, visuospatial impairment, paragraph agraphia, ideograph, and perseverative writing errors were only seen in AD group. Besides, we also found a high occurrence rate of visuoconstructional errors (13.3%) in our AD group.
CONCLUSIONS
Our study confirmed that agraphia is an important feature in patients with AD. The writing error profile in patients whose native language is Chinese was unique compared to patients using the alphabetic language system.
Topics: Aged; Agraphia; Alzheimer Disease; Asian People; Cognition Disorders; Cognitive Dysfunction; Female; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Neuropsychological Tests
PubMed: 27364791
DOI: 10.4103/0366-6999.184467 -
Dementia & Neuropsychologia 2010This study verifies the environmental effects on agraphia in mild cognitive impairment and dementia. We compared elderly Japanese subjects living in Japan and Brazil.
UNLABELLED
This study verifies the environmental effects on agraphia in mild cognitive impairment and dementia. We compared elderly Japanese subjects living in Japan and Brazil.
METHODS
We retrospectively analyzed the database of the Prevalence Study 1998 in Tajiri (n=497, Miyagi, Japan) and the Prevalence Study 1997 of elderly Japanese immigrants living in Brazil (n=166, migrated from Japan and living in the São Paulo Metropolitan Area). In three Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) groups, i.e., CDR 0 (healthy), CDR 0.5 (questionable dementia), and CDR 1+ (dementia) , the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) item of spontaneous writing and the Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument (CASI) domain of dictation were analyzed with regard to the number of Kanji and Kana characters. Formal errors in characters and pragmatic errors were also analyzed.
RESULTS
The immigrants in Brazil wrote similar numbers of Kanji or Kana characters compared to the residents of Japan. In spontaneous writing, the formal Kanji errors were greater in the CDR 1+ group of immigrants. In writing from dictation, all the immigrant CDR groups made more formal errors in Kana than the Japan residents. No significant differences in pragmatic errors were detected between the two groups.
CONCLUSIONS
Subjects living in Japan use Kanji frequently, and thus the form of written characters was simplified, which might be assessed as mild formal errors. In immigrants, the deterioration in Kanji and Kana writing was partly due to decreased daily usage of the characters. Lower levels of education of immigrants might also be related to the number of Kanji errors.
PubMed: 29213702
DOI: 10.1590/S1980-57642010DN40400008 -
Behavioural Neurology 1995We report a right-handed man who developed selective Kana (phonogram) agraphia following an infarct in the non-dominant right cerebral hemisphere. His ability for...
We report a right-handed man who developed selective Kana (phonogram) agraphia following an infarct in the non-dominant right cerebral hemisphere. His ability for comprehension, reading and writing of Kanji (ideogram) was unaffected. Kana errors consisted of substitution with another letter and the number of target words was well preserved. The lesion responsible for his Kana agraphia included the right Wernicke's area (the posterior one-third or one-half of the superior temporal gyrus) on MRI, but he did not have aphasia. Based on these findings, we conclude that the language function in some dextral people may be partially lateralized to the right cerebral hemisphere.
PubMed: 24487430
DOI: 10.3233/BEN-1995-8208 -
Case Reports in Neurology 2018We report a patient with phonological agraphia (selective impairment of kana [Japanese phonetic writing] nonwords) and acalculia (mental arithmetic difficulties) with...
We report a patient with phonological agraphia (selective impairment of kana [Japanese phonetic writing] nonwords) and acalculia (mental arithmetic difficulties) with impaired verbal short-term memory after a cerebral hemorrhage in the opercular part of the left precentral gyrus (Brodmann area 6) and the adjacent postcentral gyrus. The patient showed phonemic paragraphia in five-character kana nonword writing, minimal acalculia, and reduced digit and letter span. Mental arithmetic normalized after 8 months and agraphia recovered to the normal range at 1 year after onset, in parallel with an improvement of the auditory letter span score from 4 to 6 over a period of 14 months and in the digit span score from 6 to 7 over 24 months. These results suggest a close relationship between the recovery of agraphia and acalculia and the improvement of verbal short-term memory. The present case also suggests that the opercular part of the precentral gyrus constitutes the phonological route in writing that conveys phonological information of syllable sequences, and its damage causes phonological agraphia and acalculia with reduced verbal short-term memory.
PubMed: 29681826
DOI: 10.1159/000487849 -
Journal of Learning Disabilities 2018Sequential regression was used to evaluate whether language-related working memory components uniquely predict reading and writing achievement beyond...
Sequential regression was used to evaluate whether language-related working memory components uniquely predict reading and writing achievement beyond cognitive-linguistic translation for students in Grades 4 through 9 ( N = 103) with specific learning disabilities (SLDs) in subword handwriting (dysgraphia, n = 25), word reading and spelling (dyslexia, n = 60), or oral and written language (oral and written language learning disabilities, n = 18). That is, SLDs are defined on the basis of cascading level of language impairment (subword, word, and syntax/text). A five-block regression model sequentially predicted literacy achievement from cognitive-linguistic translation (Block 1); working memory components for word-form coding (Block 2), phonological and orthographic loops (Block 3), and supervisory focused or switching attention (Block 4); and SLD groups (Block 5). Results showed that cognitive-linguistic translation explained an average of 27% and 15% of the variance in reading and writing achievement, respectively, but working memory components explained an additional 39% and 27% of variance. Orthographic word-form coding uniquely predicted nearly every measure, whereas attention switching uniquely predicted only reading. Finally, differences in reading and writing persisted between dyslexia and dysgraphia, with dysgraphia higher, even after controlling for Block 1 to 4 predictors. Differences in literacy achievement between students with dyslexia and oral and written language learning disabilities were largely explained by the Block 1 predictors. Applications to identifying and teaching students with these SLDs are discussed.
Topics: Academic Success; Adolescent; Agraphia; Attention; Child; Dyslexia; Female; Humans; Language Development Disorders; Literacy; Male; Memory, Short-Term; Specific Learning Disorder
PubMed: 28199175
DOI: 10.1177/0022219417691048 -
Neuropsychologia Jul 2018The neural basis of reading and writing has been a source of inquiry as well as controversy in the neuroscience literature. Reading has been associated with both left...
The neural basis of reading and writing has been a source of inquiry as well as controversy in the neuroscience literature. Reading has been associated with both left posterior ventral temporal zones (termed the "visual word form area") as well as more dorsal zones, primarily in left parietal cortex. Writing has also been associated with left parietal cortex, as well as left sensorimotor cortex and prefrontal regions. Typically, the neural basis of reading and writing are examined in separate studies and/or rely on single case studies exhibiting specific deficits. Functional neuroimaging studies of reading and writing typically identify a large number of activated regions but do not necessarily identify the core, critical hubs. Last, due to constraints on the functional imaging environment, many previous studies have been limited to measuring the brain activity associated with single-word reading and writing, rather than sentence-level processing. In the current study, the brain correlates of reading and writing at both the single- and sentence-level were studied in a large sample of 111 individuals with a history of chronic stroke using voxel-based lesion symptom mapping (VLSM). VLSM provides a whole-brain, voxel-by-voxel statistical analysis of the role of distinct regions in a particular behavior by comparing performance of individuals with and without a lesion at every voxel. Rather than comparing individual cases or small groups with particular behavioral dissociations in reading and writing, VLSM allowed us to analyze data from a large, well-characterized sample of stroke patients exhibiting a wide range of reading and writing impairments. The VLSM analyses revealed that reading was associated with a critical left inferior temporo-occipital focus, while writing was primarily associated with the left supramarginal gyrus. Separate VLSM analyses of single-word versus sentence-level reading showed that sentence-level reading was uniquely associated with anterior to mid-portions of the middle and superior temporal gyri. Both single-word and sentence-level writing overlapped to a great extent in the left supramarginal gyrus, but sentence-level writing was associated with additional underlying white matter pathways such as the internal capsule. These findings suggest that critical aspects of reading and writing processes diverge, with reading relying critically on the ventral visual recognition stream and writing relying on a dorsal visuo-spatial-motor stream.
Topics: Adult; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Brain; Brain Mapping; Female; Functional Laterality; Humans; Imaging, Three-Dimensional; Linear Models; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Middle Aged; Reading; Stroke; Writing
PubMed: 29572061
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2018.03.021 -
Cureus Feb 2021We report a case of a 48-year-old man with a history of episodes of severe headache, accompanied by motor aphasia and agraphia, with complete recovery between episodes....
We report a case of a 48-year-old man with a history of episodes of severe headache, accompanied by motor aphasia and agraphia, with complete recovery between episodes. The neurological examination revealed no abnormality. A lumbar puncture was performed and showed lymphocytic pleocytosis. Cerebrospinal fluid analysis ruled out viral, bacterial, mycobacterial, fungal, treponemal, and NMDA receptor antibodies. Brain magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalogram revealed no abnormalities. A focal frontotemporal area of hypoperfusion was detected in brain single-photon emission tomography. A diagnosis of syndrome of transient headache and neurological deficits with cerebrospinal fluid lymphocytosis (HaNDL) was made to the patient and then treated with ibuprofen 400 mg three times per day with excellent response. He remained asymptomatic and free of any relapse during six months of following. We presented a typical case of HaNDL that manifests with agraphia, a transient focal neurological deficit non previously reported. Showing that the clinical picture could probably be any sign and symptom related to focal cortical alteration due to cortical transient hypoperfusion.
PubMed: 33717723
DOI: 10.7759/cureus.13178 -
Revista de Neurologia Feb 2006A careful analysis of the mistakes made by children with learning disabilities in writing reveals a number of qualitatively distinct errors, each of which is directly... (Review)
Review
INTRODUCTION
A careful analysis of the mistakes made by children with learning disabilities in writing reveals a number of qualitatively distinct errors, each of which is directly related to one of the fundamental processes underlying the ability to spell correctly, that is to say, perceptive-linguistic, metalinguistic, operative memory and long-term memory processes, among others. The objective of this study is to describe our proposal for a methodology for treating children with orthography learning difficulties that takes these processes into account.
DEVELOPMENT
A thorough analysis of the orthographic mistakes and their semiological classification is taken as our starting point, and we then put forward a sequence of instruction for each kind of error that tackles the deficient psycholinguistic processes, offsets the weaker points of the processing with the stronger points, and aims to get the child to learn a large number of words, thus favouring the metacognitive and self-regulatory processes applied to writing.
CONCLUSIONS
Teaching pupils with dyslexic and dysorthographic problems to spell and write correctly entails important methodological difficulties. In our clinical practice we have attempted to develop teaching processes that fit the semiological characteristics of the spelling errors by trying to modify both the pupil's actual academic performance and the psycholinguistic processes that underlie such errors.
Topics: Agraphia; Child; Humans; Learning Disabilities
PubMed: 16555204
DOI: No ID Found -
Neurology India 2022
Topics: Humans; Alexia, Pure; Agraphia; Reading
PubMed: 36352656
DOI: 10.4103/0028-3886.359157 -
Internal Medicine (Tokyo, Japan) Mar 2022
Topics: Agraphia; Cerebral Infarction; Dyslexia; Humans
PubMed: 34433727
DOI: 10.2169/internalmedicine.8112-21