Pure Alexia: A Combined First-Person Account and Neuropsychological Investigation

Pure alexia is an acquired reading disorder where patients' ability to read words and text is severely impaired, while their writing is left unaffected. Patients with pure alexia typically recover some reading ability over time, although most never regain their premorbid reading skills. A few studies have reported some behavioral and imaging correlates of such remission; however, little is known about the patients' experience of their reading impairment. This paper contains a first-person account of pure alexia, describing the first author's (K.H.) experience of his remission from severe reading problems immediately following a posterior cerebral artery stroke to the mild pure alexia characterizing his reading ability today. To provide a context for this account, we also present neuropsychological and reading data obtained from K.H. at several time points during his recovery.