Parietal dysgraphia: characterization of abnormal writing stroke sequences, character formation and character recall.
OBJECTIVE
To characterize various dysgraphic symptoms in parietal agraphia.


METHODS
We examined the writing impairments of four dysgraphia patients from parietal lobe lesions using a special writing test with 100 character kanji (Japanese morphograms) and their kana (Japanese phonetic writing) transcriptions, and related the test performance to a lesion site.


RESULTS
Patients 1 and 2 had postcentral gyrus lesions and showed character distortion and tactile agnosia, with patient 1 also having limb apraxia. Patients 3 and 4 had superior parietal lobule lesions and features characteristic of apraxic agraphia (grapheme deformity and a writing stroke sequence disorder) and character imagery deficits (impaired character recall). Agraphia with impaired character recall and abnormal grapheme formation were more pronounced in patient 4, in whom the lesion extended to the inferior parietal, superior occipital and precuneus gyri.


CONCLUSIONS
The present findings and a review of the literature suggest that: (i) a postcentral gyrus lesion can yield graphemic distortion (somesthetic dysgraphia), (ii) abnormal grapheme formation and impaired character recall are associated with lesions surrounding the intraparietal sulcus, the symptom being more severe with the involvement of the inferior parietal, superior occipital and precuneus gyri, (iii) disordered writing stroke sequences are caused by a damaged anterior intraparietal area.
Sakurai
Yasuhisa
Y
Department of Neurology, Mitsui Memorial Hospital, Tokyo, Japan. ysakurai-tky@umin.ac.jp
Onuma
Yoshinobu
Y
Nakazawa
Gaku
G
Ugawa
Yoshikazu
Y
Momose
Toshimitsu
T
Tsuji
Shoji
S
Mannen
Toru
T
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000381:Agraphia / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology; D002544:Cerebral Infarction / Q000150:complications* / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006236:Handwriting; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D009048:Motor Skills; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology*