Pure alexia with intact perception of complex visual stimuli: a case study

ABSTRACT

After a stroke involving the left occipitotemporal cortex our patient shows a word-length effect and has problems to identify letters or numbers in strings of symbols. But he is normal in identifying isolated letters and in non-verbally categorizing even complex images such as faces or natural scenes. His cortical lesion is stretching from the visual word form area (VWFA) anteriorly causing additional problems to name visual stimuli and to match acoustic stimuli with images. We conclude that our patient suffers from pure alexia without deficits to identify even complex visual stimuli. Our results directly contradict several explanations for letter-by-letter reading.

KEYWORDS:

• Cortical specialization
• lesion studies
• stroke
• visual perception
• visual fields
• pure alexia
• letter-by-letter reader

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Sven Eberhardt and Dennis Trenner for supplying the computer programs and Lynn Schmittwilken and Laura Hufnagl for help in data analysis and graphics.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.