1993 Volume 13 Issue 4 Pages 288-295
We report on an 80-year-old, right-handed woman, who unintentionally read aloud the characters coming in her sight. The patient experienced a sudden-onset of muteness and right hemiparesis that was more severe in her lower extremity. When the patient was transferred to our hospital one month after the ictus she showed depressed spontaneity and mixed transcortical aphasia with an echolalic tendency. As she became more active and her aphasia improved to a transcortical motor type, we observed more frequently the unintentional reading phenomenon : the patient apparently unintentionally read aloud phrases in the calendar, newspaper, stamps, and so on whenever during examination or speech therapy. We considered this unusual phenomenon to be comparable to “compulsive reading phenomenon (Tamaru et al 1986)” or “visual echolalia (Hadano et al 1988).” MR images of her brain revealed a hematoma that was confined to the medial frontal region involving the supplementary motor area. This lesion was much smaller than those of the 6 cases of echolalic reading reported by others. We suggest that this site was closely related to her unintentional reading phenomenon.
