1995 Volume 1995 Issue Supplement85 Pages 51-57
The recovery process in a case of transcortical motor aphasia is presented. The subject was a 73-year-old right-handed man. CT scan revealed a low-density area in the left internal capsule, atrophy in the left fronto-parietal lobe and an old low-density area in the right parieto-occipital lobe. The initial stage was characterized by severe disturbance in spontaneous speech, good repetition, poor oral and written comprehension, word finding difficulty. This stage showed the characteristic features of so-called transcortical mixed aphasia. Compared with the initial stage,3 months after the onset, the patient recovered naming, writing and oral and written comprehension. After 7 months, his correct naming score was more than 80/100 (80%). Disturbances in spontaneous speech and word fluency, however, remained almost unchanged. During the early stage, our case showed transcortical mixed aphasia, and then during the later stage his aphasic symptoms showed transcortical motor aphasia. However, writing errors by this patients were similar to hypergraphia which is sometimes observed in patients with right hemispheric damage. We referred his writing errors to the bilateral damage.
