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Pure Alexia

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Alexia

Abstract

Patients with pure alexia can write, but they cannot read. They can walk, talk, remember, and find their way around, and they rarely complain about problems with recognizing other visual objects, faces, or places. But when it comes to deciphering written words or text, they find themselves unable to read with the ease and fluency they did before their brain injury. Pure alexia is selective in the sense that other language functions, including writing, are intact. However, subtle visual deficits have been reported to accompany pure alexia in many patients. Many different names have been used for it; some indicate the degree of severity, e.g., global alexia, while others focus on the compensating strategies utilized by the patients, e.g., letter-by-letter reading or spelling dyslexia. In terms of localization of the damage that causes pure alexia, there is good agreement that the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex (posterior fusiform) is key; however, exactly what this brain region does, cognitively and visually, is still hotly debated. Pure alexia would seem to be a disorder eminently suited for behavioral therapy, given that other language functions (semantics, phonology, writing) are generally intact. But this has turned out not to be true. Pure alexia has proved to be a particularly stubborn opponent of the clinicians and therapists who have taken it on.

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  1. Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, UK

    Alexander Leff MBBS, BSc, PhD, FRCP

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Randi Starrfelt MSc Psych, PhD

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  1. Alexander Leff MBBS, BSc, PhD, FRCP
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  2. Randi Starrfelt MSc Psych, PhD
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Leff, A., Starrfelt, R. (2014). Pure Alexia. In: Alexia. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5529-4_3

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