1/37. A school-aged child with delayed reading skills.During a health supervision visit, the father of a 7.5-year-old African American second-grader asked about his son's progress in reading. He was concerned when, at a recent teacher-parent conference to review Darren's progress, the teacher remarked that Darren was not keeping up with reading skills compared with others in his class. She said that he had difficulty sounding out some words correctly. In addition, he could not recall words he had read the day before. The teacher commented that Darren was a gregarious, friendly child with better-than-average verbal communication skills. His achievement at math was age-appropriate; spelling, however, was difficult for Darren, with many deleted letters and reversals of written letters. A focused history did not reveal any risk factors for a learning problem in the prenatal or perinatal periods. Early motor, language, and social milestones were achieved on time. Darren had not experienced any head injury, loss of consciousness, or chronic medical illness. He had several friends, and his father denied any behavioral problems at home or at school. His teacher completed a DSM-IV-specific behavioral survey for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It did not show any evidence of ADHD. Darren's father completed 1 year of college and is currently the manager of a neighborhood convenience store. His mother had a high school education; she recalled that she found it difficult to complete assignments that required reading or writing. She is employed as a waitress. Darren does not have any siblings. The pediatrician performed a complete physical examination, the results of which were normal, including visual acuity, audiometry, and a neurological examination. It was noted that Darren seemed to pause several times in response to questions or commands. On two occasions, during finger-nose testing and a request to assess tandem gait, directions required repetition. overall, he was pleasant and seemed to enjoy the visit. His pediatrician concluded that he had a learning problem but she was uncertain about the next step. She asked herself, "Is there anything else I can do in the office to evaluate Darren's problem with learning? Should I quickly refer him for educational testing or encourage a reading tutor? What questions can I ask his teacher that would be helpful? Am I missing a medical disorder?"- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 1keywords = injury (Clic here for more details about this article) |
2/37. Converging evidence for the role of occipital regions in orthographic processing: a case of developmental surface dyslexia.Recently, there have been several reports focusing on the neural basis for word recognition. Two different views have emerged: one emphasizing the role of the left angular gyrus in recognizing printed words, and the second view suggesting that visual word processing activates the left extrastriate cortex. This paper describes the case of EBON, a 14-year-old girl with an extensive early (most likely congenital) brain lesion in the left occipital lobe. She demonstrates a clear pattern of developmental surface dyslexia in that she is more successful at reading and spelling regular words than irregular words and makes frequent regularization errors. Thus, EBON is the first case reported with the potential to establish converging evidence for the role of extrastriate regions in the left hemisphere in the acquisition of orthographic representations.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 166.69544705498keywords = brain (Clic here for more details about this article) |
3/37. Phonological and semantic information in word and nonword reading in a deep dyslexic patient.Deep dyslexia is diagnosed when brain-injured, previously literate adults make reading errors that include hallmark semantic paralexias (e.g., reading heart as blood) and are also impaired at reading nonwords (e.g., FRIP). The diversity of these symptoms have led most researchers to conclude that there are multiple sources of impairment in this syndrome and that one of the most critical is a failure to process phonological information at a sublexical level. The patient (SD) reported in this study fits the deep dyslexia profile to the extent that she makes several semantically related reading errors. She also shows the classic frequency and image ability effects of the syndrome. However, as we report, she does read some nonwords correctly and she shows a strong advantage for naming when phonemic cues are presented. We discuss the performance of SD, on these preliminary tasks, in terms of a phonological selection impairment.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 166.69544705498keywords = brain (Clic here for more details about this article) |
4/37. Visual implicit memory deficit and developmental surface dyslexia: a case of early occipital damage.This study reports the case of EBON, a fifteen-year-old right-handed female Swedish student, who suffered an early medial/dorsal occipital brain lesion and showed a clearly defined pattern of developmental surface dyslexia. EBON and 17 controls were examined with within and cross-modality (visual and auditory) word stem completion tasks together with tasks requiring free-recall and recognition for visually and auditory presented words. Compared to age-matched controls, EBON was found to show a significant deficit of visual priming following visual presentation, and a deficit approaching significance following auditory presentation. Explicit memory and visual and spatial abilities were not significantly different from controls. Therefore, EBON represents the first childhood case establishing the role of occipital regions in visual priming, as well as illustrating a profile of surface reading difficulty as a developmental consequence of this locus of lesion.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 166.69544705498keywords = brain (Clic here for more details about this article) |
5/37. Number processing and calculation in a case of visual agnosia.We describe the performance of a brain-damaged subject who suffered from visual agnosia leading to major difficulties in generating and exploiting visual representations from long-term memory. His performance in a physical judgement task in which he was required to answer questions about the visual shapes of Arabic numerals reflected his agnosic problems. However, he showed no impairment in usual number processing and calculation tasks. This case shows that, despite some commonalities in number and object processing, actual numerical processes are not affected by visual agnosia and can be preserved even when fine visual processes are impaired.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 166.69544705498keywords = brain (Clic here for more details about this article) |
6/37. The application of cognitive event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in language-impaired individuals: review and case studies.There is a substantial body of basic research that has utilized ERPs to investigate the neurological basis of cognition. This research has, in turn, led to the development of practical applications of cognitive ERPs in patient populations. In particular, recent work has focused on the development of ERP-based assessment measures for the neuropsychological assessment of dyslexia and language impairments secondary to stroke. This review describes the innovative assessment methods program (IAMP), an initiative to utilize ERPs for a neuropsychological assessment of patients who cannot be evaluated by traditional methods. The success of this program has demonstrated that ERPs can be used to reliably evaluate an individual's reading and speech comprehension abilities, independent of behavioral and speech production impediments. In contrast to traditional neuropsychological assessment, these ERP methods can discern the cognitive strategies used by an individual to perform a task.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 666.78178821994keywords = brain (Clic here for more details about this article) |
7/37. Alterations in the functional anatomy of reading induced by rehabilitation of an alexic patient.OBJECTIVE: The goal of the study was to measure regional cerebral blood flow (CBF) in a stroke patient with acquired phonologic alexia before and after therapy using the Auditory Discrimination in Depth (ADD) program. BACKGROUND: After rehabilitation of acquired language disorders, functional imaging can detect activity in brain structures that do not mediate language during normal conditions. However, the anatomic correlates of recovery or rehabilitation from acquired reading disorders are largely undescribed. methods: Cerebral SPECT scans were obtained before and after the intervention with Auditory Discrimination in Depth. The first and last activation tasks necessitated that the patient read nonwords during radionuclide uptake. Another (control) scan was acquired during performance of a nonlinguistic task shortly before the end of the ADD program. RESULTS: Before therapy, the right hemisphere was inactive during nonword reading relative to the nonlinguistic task. After treatment, nonword reading increased cerebral blood flow in the posterior right perisylvian cortices homologous to the dominant hemisphere areas engaged by reading. brain activity also increased in Broca's area of both hemispheres. CONCLUSIONS: dyslexia rehabilitation may facilitate right-hemisphere cortical networks in the reading process and increase engagement of phonologic articulatory motor representations in Broca's area.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 166.69544705498keywords = brain (Clic here for more details about this article) |
8/37. Alexia without agraphia: a century later.A case of alexia without agraphia is presented. It is a rare but classic disconnection syndrome, first described by Dejerine in 1892. Recent advances in modern neuroimaging techniques such as FLAIR MRI can now localise in vivo the site of origin of the syndrome, especially when computerised axial tomogram of the brain is normal.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 166.69544705498keywords = brain (Clic here for more details about this article) |
9/37. Hanja alexia with agraphia after left posterior inferior temporal lobe infarction: a case study.Korean written language is composed of ideogram (Hanja) and phonogram (Hangul), as Japanese consists of Kanji (ideogram) and Kana (phonogram). Dissociation between ideogram and phonogram impairment after brain injury has been reported in Japanese, but few in Korean. We report a 64-yr-old right-handed man who showed alexia with agraphia in Hanja but preserved Hangul reading and writing after a left posterior inferior temporal lobe infarction. Interestingly, the patient was an expert in Hanja; he had been a Hanja calligrapher over 40 yr. However, when presented with 65 basic Chinese letters that are taught in elementary school, his responses were slow both in reading (6.3 sec/letter) and writing (8.8 sec/letter). The rate of correct response was 81.5% (53 out of 65 letters) both in reading and writing. The patient's performances were beyond mean-2SD of those of six age-, sex-, and education-matched controls who correctly read 64.7 out of 65 and wrote 62.5 out of 65 letters with a much shorter reaction time (1.3 sec/letter for reading and 4.0 sec/letter for writing). These findings support the notion that ideogram and phonogram can be mediated in different brain regions and Hanja alexia with agraphia in Korean patients can be associated with a left posterior inferior temporal lesion.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 334.39089410997keywords = brain, injury (Clic here for more details about this article) |
10/37. reading errors in patients with cerebellar vermis lesions.dyslexia, both developmental and acquired, has been considered the result of cerebrocortical dysfunction, affecting the temporo-parieto-occipital brain regions. However, dyslexia may involve abnormalities of the magnocellular component of the visual system, leading to binocular instability or alterations of accommodation. To test the hypothesis of cerebellar involvement in the reading process -- justified by its emergent role in language and cognition -- we studied 10 patients with cerebellar vermis/paravermis lesions using reading tests and we compared the results with those produced by 10 normal volunteers. The data obtained demonstrate an increased number of reading mistakes in the patient group, resulting from a possible alteration of the diffuse connection system from the cerebellum to different cerebrocortical and subcortical structures. Acquired dyslexia due to cerebellar impairment may be due to oculomotor alteration or, more subtly, to the intimate cerebellar-encephalic projections, connecting the cerebellum to the attentive and alerting processes and to the language system. We discuss the data with an overview of literature.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 166.69544705498keywords = brain (Clic here for more details about this article) |
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