A 63-year old right-handed high school teacher of mathematics showed the syndrome of Gogi (word-meaning) aphasia (Imura, 1943) associated with intellectual impairment (presenile dementia). Generalized cortical atrophy was observed in CT-scans, in which atrophy was remarkable in the temporal lobes (especially left side). Neuropsychological features were as follows : (1) The subject displayed fluent spontaneous speech with difficulties in word finding. (2) Although he showed good oral repetition, he was severely impaired in verbal comprehension due to the difficulty in word-meaning comprehension. (3) He was impaired in reading and writing of Kanji characters selectively compared with Kana characters, such as on-kun confused paralexias and phonetically equivalent paragraphias in Kanji characters. (4) While he had no constructional problems, he had difficulties in the comprehension of general symbolic meanings and drawings. The syndrome of Gogi aphasia is also discussed comparing it with cases of Gogi aphasia and transcortical sensory aphasia previously reported.
