Sign language in childhood epileptic aphasia (Landau-Kleffner syndrome)

Acquired epileptic aphasia (AEA, or Landau-Kleffner syndrome) is a unique c ondition in which children can lose oral language (OL) comprehension and ex pression for a prolonged period. These children can benefit from visual for ms of language, mainly sign language (SL), but the quality of SL has never been analyzed. The case is reported here of a boy with AEA who lost speech comprehension and expression from 3 years 6 months to 7 years and was educa ted in SL from the age of 6 years. His SL was evaluated at the age of 13 ye ars and 6 months and compared with a control child with congenital sensorin eural deafness. It was found that: (1) our patient achieved the same profic iency in SL as the control child with deafness; (2) SL learning did not com pete with, but perhaps even hastened, the recovery of OL. Intact ability to learn a new linguistic code such as SL suggests that higher-order language areas were preserved and received input from a separate visual route, as s hown by neuropsychological and functional imaging research in deaf and hear ing signers.