Abstract
We present the case of a 74 year-old right-handed man who developed agrammatism following occlusion of the right medial cerebral artery. He had crossed aphasia (Broca's type), left spatial neglect, constructive disorders, left hemianopsia, left hemiparesis and sensory disturbance. He exhibited remarkable agrammatism in speaking, repetition, reading and writing, but showed good word finding, confrontation naming and a rich vocabulary. He did not exhibit any auditory comprehension disorders in daily life and enjoyed listening to the radio daily. His performance on auditory comprehension tasks (The Japanese version of the Western Aphasia Battery and the Token Test) was almost perfect, whereas he showed poor performance for grammatical judgments on sentences including particles like “ga” , “ni” and “wo” . The fact that his performance changed together with the plausibility of the word meaning indicates he had a severe grammatical comprehension disorder. His ability to comprehend sentences using word meaning seems to be based on preservation of his vocabulary. He understood the difference between “Touch the pencil and comb, please” and “Touch the comb with the pencil, please” . This means that he could comprehend some function words, particularly when he understood the verb meaning.
