Acquired dysgraphia in adults following right or left-hemisphere stroke.

Jaqueline de Carvalho Rodrigues,Denise Ren da Fontoura,Jerusa Fumagalli de Salles

doi:10.1590/s1980-57642014dn83000007

Jaqueline de Carvalho Rodrigues, Denise Ren da Fontoura + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1590/s1980-57642014dn83000007

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Abstract

ObjectiveThis study aimed to assess the strengths and difficulties in word and pseudoword writing in adults with left- and right-hemisphere strokes, and discuss the profiles of acquired dysgraphia in these individuals.MethodsThe profiles of six adults with acquired dysgraphia in left- or right-hemisphere strokes were investigated by comparing their performance on word and pseudoword writing tasks against that of neurologically healthy adults. A case series analysis was performed on the patients whose impairments on the task were indicative of acquired dysgraphia.ResultsTwo patients were diagnosed with lexical dysgraphia (one with left hemisphere damage, and the other with right hemisphere damage), one with phonological dysgraphia, another patient with peripheral dysgraphia, one patient with mixed dysgraphia and the last with dysgraphia due to damage to the graphemic buffer. The latter patients all had left-hemisphere damage (LHD). The patterns of impairment observed in each patient were discussed based on the dual-route model of writing.ConclusionThe fact that most patients had LHD rather than right-hemisphere damage (RHD) highlights the importance of the former structure for word processing. However, the fact that lexical dysgraphia was also diagnosed in a patient with RHD suggests that these individuals may develop writing impairments due to damage to the lexical route, leading to heavier reliance on phonological processing. Our results are of significant importance to the planning of writing interventions in neuropsychology.

Highlights

Acquired dysgraphia is the partial or total inability to produce written language following neurological damage.[1,2] According to cognitive models of writing, dysgraphia may be either a result of language im
Most of the errors made by patient LHD2 consisted of letter omissions, which were observed in the spontaneous writing and sentence copying tasks of the NEUPSILIN-Af
Letter omissions often result from difficulties in the identification and production of words as a whole and in phoneme-grapheme conversion when writing to dictation

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Acquired dysgraphia (or agraphia) is the partial or total inability to produce written language following neurological damage.[1,2] According to cognitive models of writing, dysgraphia may be either a result of language im-. Phonological dysgraphia is associated with extreme difficulty in writing pseudowords as compared to real words due to impaired phoneme-grapheme conversion, which may lead to problems when writing unfamiliar words.[17] As a result, lexicalization errors, as well as frequency and lexicality effects, are often observed in these cases. This type of dysgraphia is often reported in patients with damage to perisylvian cortical regions.[18,19]. This study aimed to assess the strengths and difficulties in word and pseudoword writing in adults with left- and righthemisphere strokes, and discuss the profiles of acquired dysgraphia in these individuals

METHOD

RESULTS

42 Regularity and frequency Regularization and graphemic paragraphia

DISCUSSION