MODALITY-SPECIFIC NAMING AND GESTURE DISTURBANCES - A CASE WITH OPTICAPHASIA, BILATERAL TACTILE APHASIA, OPTIC APRAXIA AND TACTILE APRAXIA

This study reports a patient who manifested optic aphasia, tactile aph asia, optic apraxia, and tactile apraxia following an operation for ep idural left parietal haematoma. He could neither name nor pantomime th e use of objects presented visually or tactually, but correctly perfor med semantic association tasks, thus demonstrating preserved recogniti on. He could name and pantomime the use of auditorily presented object s. Experimental results disproved that pantomime disorders were second ary to naming disorders, and suggested that modality specific aphasia and modality specific apraxia are independent clinical syndromes. CT s cans showed injury to the posterior callosal radiations, the white mat ter of the angular gyrus, and the medial portion of the occipital lobe in the left hemisphere. We suggest that modality specific aphasia and modality specific apraxia can be explained by assuming a common seman tic memory store.