Article ID: cn-001763
We report a patient presenting with crossed aphasia following infarction in the territory of the right anterior cerebral artery (ACA). A right-handed 68-year-old woman without a history of correction had acute disturbance of consciousness, left hemiparesis predominant in the lower extremity, speech disorder and left unilateral spatial neglect during the admission due to hypertensive emergency. No other family member was left-handed. MRI of the head revealed acute phase infarction in the territory of the right ACA: mesial frontal lobe including the supplementary motor area, anterior cingulate gyrus, and the corpus callosum. Language symptoms in the subacute phase included difficulty in initiation, slow speech rate, loss of intonation and phonetic paraphasia, and accompanying errors in comprehension, repetition, reading, and writing letters. These symptoms suggested “anomalous” type crossed aphasia. No limb apraxia, construction disorder or left unilateral spatial neglect was observed in this period. Only a few cases of crossed aphasia due to infarction in the territory of the ACA have been reported so far. However, language and concomitant symptoms differs, depending on each case, suggesting a difference in individual cerebral lateralization.
