치매와 실서증

Abstract

Agraphia can be characterized as spelling errors (as in e.g., lexical agraphia, phonological agraphia) and motoric-writing impairment. In dementia with Alzheimer’s disease(AD), lexical agraphia is the prominent type of spelling errors regardless of the disease severity whereas phonological agraphia is often observed with disease progression. Motoric-writing disturbance is also common in later stage of the disease. Meanwhile, in semantic dementia, although lexical agraphia is also prominent, motoric-writing ability is usually preserved unlike AD. Other forms of dementia such as posterior cortical atrophy and vascular dementia area also reported but the specific nature of the spelling and motoric-writing deficits has not yet been explored. This article reviews the spelling and motoric-writing deficits in major types of dementia. From the review, we concluded that further research investigating on both central and peripheral components would aid us in understanding the agraphic features of the various types of dementia.