Central (or conduction) aphasia in a Japanese patient

A case of relatively pure conduction aphasia in a 66 year old woman is reported. A detailed linguistic analysis was performed and the patient's handling of the phonogrammic and ideogrammic aspects of the Japanese language was analysed. The patient showed a comparable pattern of difficultly in the following four operations: (1) naming of pictures (2) reading aloud of Kanji and Kana characters, (3) repetition of words and (4) transcription of heard words into Kanji and Kana characters. Of special note was the patient's superior written transcription of the ideographic symbols and the superior oral reading of the phonogrammic symbols. These results indicate that the patient had a basic defect in expressing the predetermined target word in verbal or writter form. From the analysis of Kana writings it is hypothesized that the in ability to establish a stable and distinct acoustic word image is responsible for this basic expressive difficulty leading to both paraphasic and paragraphic errors.