Abstract
A 68-year-old calligrapher developed difficulties in reading and writing confined to kanji characters. He was neither aphasic nor demented. Neurological examination revealed slight impairment of short-term memory and mild sensory impairment on the left half of the body.
A computed tomographic scan showed a hypodense area in the inferior medial aspect of the right temporal lobe. This lesion was also detected by magnetic resonance imaging.
The subject was thought to be incompletely right-handed from the evidence that he occasionally uses his left limbs in various daily activities, such as eating with a spoon, combing his hair, kicking a ball, etc.
As the patterns of his errors in reading and writing kanji characters were not uniform, it was difficult to explain the mechanism of this specific type of alexia and agraphia only as a disturbance of semantic function in reading and writing kanji characters.
