OBJECTIVETo analyze the neurolinguistic features of a Chinese patient with pure alexia in acute and convalescent stages.

METHODSWe assessed the reading and writing abilities of the patient with the Aphasia Battery of Chinese (ABC), the reading examination of Chinese characters (1999, Lin) and the Chinese agraphia battery (CAB).

RESULTSIn the ABC examination in the acute phase, the patient performed well in oral expression and comprehension, and the prominent linguistic abnormalities were alexia and merging agraphia; in the convalescent phase, the recovery of alexia was better than that of agraphia. In reading examination of Chinese characters, shape errors were the main reading disorders in the acute phase with a few semantic errors, regularization errors and mistakes in pronunciation, but only shape errors reappeared in the recovery period. CAB examination showed impairment of writing for pictures and dictation abilities in the recovery period but recovery of other writing abilities. The writing disorder was manifested as aphasic agraphia, with obvious dysorthography and lexical errors; the patient was capable of spontaneous writing only after spontaneous speech, and was able to read the written words.

CONCLUSIONThe linguistic components of the Chinese patient with pure alexia showed different patterns of damage and recovery, suggesting the difference in their respective neuropsychological pathways.