[A case of representational dysgraphia and object representational disorder with unilateral spatial neglect]

We describe the case of a 48-year-old left-handed woman with unilateral neglect from a brain infarction in the area of the right basal ganglia and temporo-parieto-occipital lobe. When a Kanji character was dictated to her, she wrote only the right side (tukuri) of the character. When copying a picture from the visual image of a left-right asymmetrical object, such as the side view of the dog, she drew the tail and a hind leg immediately but was unable to draw a picture of the dog from the left side. We asked her to imagine going around to the opposite side of the imaginary dog and to draw it from that perspective. She easily drew the left side first, resulting in a left-right inverted picture of what she had previously drawn. She then tried to slowly visualize the missing part of her imagery, and was able to draw only the right tip of the missing part. She could not compose a complete picture of the dog. These findings suggested that the impairment was in the imaging of the left side of a character or object and that this was a case of representational dysgraphia and object representational disorder with unilateral spatial neglect.