Anderson S W, Damasio A R, Damasio H
Department of Neurology, University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City 52242.
Brain. 1990 Jun;113 ( Pt 3):749-66. doi: 10.1093/brain/113.3.749.
A well educated right-handed woman developed severe and stable alexia and agraphia following a circumscribed surgical lesion in the left premotor cortex. The lesion was located in Brodmann's field 6, above Broca's area, in the region traditionally referred to as Exner's area. The alexia and agraphia occurred in a pure form, that is, in the setting of otherwise normal cognitive and neurological function. She was not aphasic or hemiparetic and her visual perception, intellect, memory, oral spelling and drawing were normal. The patterns of impairment of reading and writing closely paralleled one another. Reading of single words and letters was severely impaired, and she was entirely unable to read sentences. She was virtually unable to write recognizable letters, could write no words, and her writing attempts were severely distorted spatially. By contrast, she could easily read all numbers and nonverbal symbols, and she was equally able to write numbers and perform written calculations without difficulty. These striking dissociations provide further evidence of the domain specificity of cognitive/neural representations. They also point to the possible role of premotor cortices in the coactivation of precise sequences of motor and sensory activity patterns involved in reading and writing.
一名受过良好教育的右利手女性在左前运动皮层出现局限性手术损伤后，患上了严重且稳定的失读症和失写症。该损伤位于布罗德曼第6区，在布洛卡区上方，处于传统上被称为埃克斯纳区的区域。失读症和失写症以纯粹的形式出现，也就是说，在其他认知和神经功能正常的情况下出现。她没有失语症或偏瘫，其视觉感知、智力、记忆、口头拼写和绘画能力均正常。阅读和书写的受损模式彼此密切平行。单个单词和字母的阅读严重受损，她完全无法阅读句子。她几乎无法写出可辨认的字母，写不出任何单词，并且她的书写尝试在空间上严重扭曲。相比之下，她能够轻松读出所有数字和非语言符号，并且同样能够毫无困难地书写数字和进行书面计算。这些显著的分离为认知/神经表征的领域特异性提供了进一步的证据。它们还指出了前运动皮层在阅读和写作中涉及的运动和感觉活动模式精确序列的共同激活中可能发挥的作用。
