[Progressive anarthria: one case without lingual apraxia]

Progressive anarthria is a focal cortical degenerative disorder characterized by a profound, progressive alteration in speech without impairment in other cognitive domains. The first symptoms consist of an alteration in the articulation of speech producing telegraphic speech. The disorder invariably progress towards anarthria by deprogramming of the phonation and orolingual movements (bucophonetic apraxia). This type of apraxia is usually associated with orolinguofacial apraxia and it has been anatomofunctionally correlated with frontal opercular involvement of left predominance. The patient presented as progressive anarthria in the absence of manifest orolingual apraxia associated with a predominance of cortical atrophy in the right frontal operculum. This semiological dissociation emphasizes the importance of bucophonatory apraxia in the pathophysiology of progressive anarthria.