J Clin Neurol.  2006 Dec;2(4):258-261. 10.3988/jcn.2006.2.4.258.

Optic Aphasia: A Case Study

Affiliations
  • 1Department of Neurology, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Asan Medical Center, Korea. mskwon@amc.seoul.kr

Abstract

Optic aphasia is a rare syndrome in which patients are unable to name visually presented objects but have no difficulty in naming those objects on tactile or verbal presentation. We report a 79-year-old man who exhibited anomic aphasia after a left posterior cerebral artery territory infarction. His naming ability was intact on tactile and verbal semantic presentation. The results of the systematic assessment of visual processing of objects and letters indicated that he had optic aphasia with mixed features of visual associative agnosia. Interestingly, although he had difficulty reading Hanja (an ideogram), he could point to Hanja letters on verbal description of their meaning, suggesting that the processes of recognizing objects and Hanja share a common mechanism.

Keyword

Optic aphasia; Visual agnosia; Dyslexia

MeSH Terms

Aged
Agnosia
Anomia
Aphasia*
Dyslexia
Humans
Infarction
Posterior Cerebral Artery
Semantics

Figure

  • Figure 1 T2-weighed axial (A) and T1-weighted sagittal (B) brain magnetic resonance imaging scans showing an infarct in the left occipital and posterior temporal areas with dilatation of the temporal horn of the left lateral ventricle. An infarct lesion is also noted in the left splenium.


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