Recovery process of a Japanese alexic without agraphia

Abstract

Abstract Mechanisms of the recovery of a Japanese alexic without agraphia were discussed in terms of kana (Japanese syllabaries) and kanji (Japanese-Chinese characters or logograms). In the course of the therapy where kinesthetic facilitation was predominantly emphasized, our patient showed improvement in reading kana and kanji aloud with actions of copying them. At the later stage improvement was also observed in reading aloud without the copying actions. We also observed that the number of correctly read components of a character increased. Follow-up studies to investigate mechanisms of the patient's recovery revealed the following results: (1) his right hand improved in copying familiar kanji while the same hand was still impaired in copying unused kanji and in tracing kanji regardless of frequency, and (2) his ability to read kana aloud was significantly hindered by the concurrent task of triangular repetitive movements with the right upper limb although it was not hindered by tapping with the same limb. It is inferred that participation of kinesthetic images of characters rather than restoration of visual images contributed to the improvement in reading aloud in our patient. Visual stimuli received in his right visual cortex presumably became able to evoke a kinesthetic image of characters in the language areas by way of intact parts of commissural fibres.