title: Agraphia with abnormal writing stroke sequences due to cerebral infarction.
abstract: A 65-year-old, right-handed man presented with speech and gait disturbances. He was alert and cooperative, showing mild right hemiparesis and sensory disturbance. Spontaneous speech was fluent; object naming, word fluency and reading were fully preserved. Sentence repetition and verbal comprehension were mildly impaired. Writing was slow, hesitant and difficult for both spontaneous writing and dictation. Copying was better, although he had some difficulty in copying letters and also complex figures. Sequences of strokes in forming written characters were abnormal; strokes were formed by piecing together several fragments. Computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging showed a subcortical infarct in the left frontoparietal region. Characteristics of agraphia resembled 'apractic agraphia' and agraphia may have resulted largely from loss or unavailability of the memory of motor patterns necessary for writing letters.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, Wakayama Medical University, Wakayama, Japan. maeshima@wakayama-m
authors.forename: Shinichiro
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Maeshima
authors.forename: Eri
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Sekiguchi
authors.forename: Koji
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kakishita
authors.forename: Hideo
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Okada
authors.forename: Ryuji
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Okita
authors.forename: Fuminori
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Ozaki
authors.forename: Hiroshi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Moriwaki
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000381:Agraphia / Q000209:etiology*; D002544:Cerebral Infarction / Q000523:psychology*; D005625:Frontal Lobe; D006236:Handwriting; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009460:Neurologic Examination; D010296:Parietal Lobe; D015899:Tomography, Emission-Computed, Single-Photon; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed