Abstract Details

Title Agraphia in Posterior Cortical Atrophy (PCA): A Systematic Investigation of Writing Deficit in a Case Series

Topic Behavioral Neurology

Presentation(s) P06 - (-)

Poster/Presentation
Number 069

Objective

Background BACKGROUND: Although agraphia is among the main features of PCA, its cognitive aspects have been rarely analyzed in details and reports of writing impairment are heterogeneous.

Design/Methods DESIGN/METHODS: Extensive assessment of writing processes: [bull]central components tasks: writing to dictation and oral spelling of words and non-words [bull]peripheral components tasks: writing to dictation, copying, cross-case transcription and mental imagery of lower- and upper-case letters and digits.

Results RESULTS: Three PCA patients showed ideomotor and visuo-contructional apraxia, one had visual agnosia without ideomotor apraxia. All patients presented peripheral agraphia only involving cursive handwriting, sparing upper-case print letters and digits. Two patients were unable to use cursive in all tasks (direct copy, writing to dictation, transcoding from upper-case print to lower case cursive); two have difficulty in retrieving only some letters in writing to dictation and in transcoding task (letters were ill-formed or reverted to upper-case print) but they could copy the same stimuli; moreover, they were impaired in form-judgment task restricted to the affected style. Writing to dictation of both upper-case letters/words and single digits/numbers were spared in all cases. In two cases the selective cursive format impairment could be attributed to deficit in retrieving graphomotor patterns, in the others to allographic representation deficit.

Conclusions CONCLUSIONS: Although low PCA prevalence makes it difficult to create a clinical cohort, these findings seem to outline that a) selective deficit in retrieving cursive format, sparing upper-case and digits production, could be a common feature of agraphia in PCA b) cursive specific deficit extends beyond transcoding from upper-case print to lower-case cursive as previously reported c) observed handwriting cursive deficit could not be explained only by lower-case greater graphomotor complexity or praxic/visuospatial impairment.

Authors/Disclosures
Tatiana Cattaruzza, MD (Clinica Neurologica - Ospedale Cattinara) PRESENTER	No disclosure on file
	No disclosure on file
	No disclosure on file
	No disclosure on file
Gilberto Pizzolato, MD (Univ of Trieste/Dept of Neurology/ITALY)	No disclosure on file
Sean I. Savitz, MD	Dr. Savitz has nothing to disclose.

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