Number processing in posterior cortical atrophy--a neuropsycholgical case study.

Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) is an uncommon syndrome of dementia with early onset, characterised by disorders of higher visual function, variable symptoms of Balint's syndrome, visual agnosia, alexia, agraphia, finger agnosia, right-left disorientation and dyscalculia [Benson D. F., Davis R.

When writing 0 (zero) is easier than writing O (o): a neuropsychological case study of agraphia.

Though a few case studies reported a dissociation between intact writing of Arabic and impaired writing of alphabetical script, a detailed experimental analysis of such a dissociation is still lacking. We report a follow-up study of a patient with a parieto-occipital lesion who is affected by severe peripheral agraphia for letters, but not for Arabic digits. While letters in writing to dictation are frequently illegible, distorted, or consist in meaningless strokes, Arabic digits are well-formed and fluently produced.

[The diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia].

Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration (FTDL) is a neurodegenerative disorder which is predominantly characterized by changes in behaviour and loss of cognitive abilities. Three major clinical syndromes have been identified, Frontotemporal dementia (FTD), in which changes in social behaviour predominate, Semantic Dementia (SD) which is characterized by a loss of semantic knowledge, and Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA), a disorder of phonological and syntactic aspects of language. All subtypes of FTLD have insiduous onset and stepwise progression.

Mania caused by a diencephalic lesion.

We describe the case of a young male patient, SN, who suffered a MR-documented ischaemic lesion of both dorsomedial thalami and presented with a transient maniform syndrome. SN's neuropsychological, structural and functional imaging findings are compared with similar reported cases and are discussed in the framework of fronto-subcortical circuits and their proposed behavioural disorders. SN's mania was characterized by restlessness, mood elevation, a tendency for pleasurable activities, inflated self-esteem and loss of disease awareness.