Pure alexia with intact perception of complex visual stimuli: a case study

Abstract

After a stroke involving the left occipitotemporal cortex our patient shows a word-length effect and has problems to identify letters or numbers in strings of symbols. But he is normal in identifying isolated letters and in non-verbally categorizing even complex images such as faces or natural scenes. His cortical lesion is stretching from the visual word form area (VWFA) anteriorly causing additional problems to name visual stimuli and to match acoustic stimuli with images. We conclude that our patient suffers from pure alexia without deficits to identify even complex visual stimuli. Our results directly contradict several explanations for letter-by-letter reading.

Keywords: Cortical specialization; lesion studies; letter-by-letter reader; pure alexia; stroke; visual fields; visual perception.