[Neuropsychological study of crossed aphasia with jargon agraphia]

A case of jargon writing following a right vascular cortico-subcortical lesion in the right sylvian territory of a strictly right-handed patient is presented and analyzed. In spontaneous writings the general graphic form of sentences is present (blanks, punctuation) but a great number of neologisms appear. Disorganisation of oral language in this case of crossed aphasia takes the form of a conduction aphasia. The patient is capable of oral spelling and of writing single letters under dictation. If he is asked to spell orally a dictated word while attempting to write it, his writing is much improved. This observation is contrasted with that of an agraphic patient whose writing is limited to concrete nouns. The analysis of the data obtained confirms the existence of different strategies of graphic encoding recently described in various neuropsychological studies: the agraphia of the crossed aphasic patient is related to the lexical form, that of the second patient is related to the phonological form.