Agraphia caused by an infarction in Exner's area

Abstract

Sigmund Exner postulated in 1881 that lesions of the base of the medial frontal gyrus could specifically produce writing impairments and attributed the writing centre to this area. We report two patients who suffered from strokes in this area. These patients suffered from writing disturbances comprising both omitted words within a sentence or badly written words, as well as aphasia. These patients, in line with prior reports, illustrate the crucial role of the Exner area at the base of the medial frontal gyrus for the cerebral writing network; we suggest that this region plays an important role for phoneme-grapheme conversions.

Keywords: Agraphia; Exner’s area; Stroke.