Afferent dysgraphia after right cerebral stroke: An autonomous syndrome?

Afferent dysgraphia is an acquired writing deficit characterized by deletio ns and duplications of letters and strokes. The commonly accepted interpret ation states that afferent dysgraphia ti associated with three main clinica l features: production of spatial writing errors the presence of left unila teral neglect; and no deterioration in performance when writing blindfolded . In order to test whether these symptoms necessarily co-occur with afferen t dysgraphia, we studied the writing performances of a series of eight righ t brain-damaged patients. In sentence copying, spontaneous handwriting, and writing to dictation they showed afferent dysgraphia. However, signs of le ft neglect and spatial dysgraphia were evident only in some cases. Furtherm ore, the frequency of afferent errors increased when patients were required to write without vision, The present study demonstrates that afferent dysg raphia is an autonomous clinical entity and that it results from a selectiv e impairment of a mechanism whose function is that of comparing the informa tion about the number of letters and strokes specified at the level of lett er motor programs and the actual number of movements already realized. (C) 2000 Academic Press.