Language Disorders
inability to read or write as a result of a left angular gyrus lesion
Alexia with agraphia
Failure to access stored kinematic patterns or “space-time engrams” resulting in inability to perform given actions to command
Can understand speech and know what they want to say, but they frequently speak in short phrases that are produced with great effort. They often omit small words, such as "is," "and" and "the," i.e., telegraphic speech.
Expressive aphasia
Writing disability (agraphia or dysgraphia), a lack of understanding of the rules for calculation or arithmetic (acalculia or dyscalculia), an inability to distinguish right from left, and an inability to identify fingers (finger agnosia).
Gerstmann syndrome
Inability to recognize faces. Anatomy = right anterior inferior occipital lesions in the region of the occipital temporal junction.
Prosopagnosia
disconnection syndrome that occurs when the splenium is damaged with the occipital lobe on a dominant side resulting in ability to write but not read own written or typed material.
Alexia without agraphia
Errors not typically observed with simple movements but in the setting of complex multistep sequences, such as addressing and mailing an envelope.
Ideational apraxia
Damage to the temporal lobe of the brain resulting in fluent aphasia. People may speak in long, complete sentences that have no meaning, adding unnecessary words and even creating made-up words.
Receptive aphasia
Visual hallucinations occur as a result of vision loss. Patients are aware that their hallucinations are not real. Thought to be related to the brain continuing to interpret images, even in their absence.
Charles Bonet syndrome
Subjective belief that a place has been duplicated, existing in at least two locations simultaneously
Reduplicative amnesia
profound problem understanding spoken language, even though ability to read and to speak is completely unaffected. Patients describe speech sounding as if it is a barely audible whisper or as if it is a foreign language. It is often associated with lesions to auditory processing regions in the brain.
Pure word deafness
Inattention to the left side when dressing; signifies a feature of the neglect syndrome rather than the loss of the ability to use tools. Typically, a right hemisphere lesion is implicated.
Dressing apraxia
Lesions of the left frontal lobe–supplementary motor area (SMA) resulting in normal repetition and comprehension, with limited, slow, and perseverative spontaneous speech.
Transcortical motor aphasia
Simultanagnosia), ocular apraxia and optic ataxia. Most commonly results from biparietal damage, but has also been reported with occipital and thalamic lesions.
Balint's syndrome
Loss in the perception of colors due to a lesion of the visual association cortex, may result in unilateral deficit in color perception.
Achromatopsia
Markedly impaired articulation, but preserved receptive and written language function and buccal-facial coordination. Sometimes presents as foreign language syndrome.
Aphemia
Disorder in which even simple movements lack precision and fluency. Slowness and stiffness of movements with a loss of fine, precise and independent movement of the fingers.
Limb-kinetic apraxia
May occur when a lesion functionally isolates Wernicke's areas from the rest of the brain, leaving the reception-to-output sufficiently unimpaired that repetition is preserved; neither speech comprehension nor spontaneous speech remain intact.
Transcortical sensory aphasia
Belief that a relative or friend has been replaced by an imposter who resembles the original exactly. Results from a disconnection of the fusiform face recognition area of the right temporal lobe from the limbic system, impairing the usual emotional response to familiar faces.
Capgras syndrome
Inability of a person to properly convey or interpret emotional content of speech. Refers to the ranges of rhythm, pitch, stress, intonation, etc.
Aprosodia
Disorder characterized by relatively preserved ability to read words with regular or predictable grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences but substantially impaired reading of words with “irregular” or exceptional print-to-sound correspondences (cough, rough, bough)
Surface dyslexia
Apraxia of the left limb due to damage to the anterior left hemisphere (the right hand being partially or fully paralyzed).
Sympathetic apraxia
Inability to repeat words or phrases. Other areas of language are less impaired (or not at all). Caused by a lesion in the arcuate fasciculus which connects the two para-Sylvian speech centers.
Conduction aphasia
Anterograde and retrograde amnesia not caused by hippocampal lesions.
Retrosplenial amnesia
Inability to locate and identify parts of one’s body even though the ability to locate and name the parts of objects, plants or animals is unaffected. Usually associated with damage to the rear of the parietal cortex (near the crown of the head) in the left hemisphere.
Autotopagnosia