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Double dissociation of Hangul and Hanja reading in Korean patients with stroke.

Kwon M, Kim JS, Lee JH, Sim H, Nam K, Park H

Department of Neurology, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul, 138-736, Republic of Korea. mskwon@amc.seoul.kr

The orthographic system of the Korean language consists of both phonogram (Hangul) and ideogram (Hanja). We report 2 patients who revealed selective impairment in reading either of orthographies after the brain damages. YJ, a 67-year-old man, showed Broca's aphasia and severe apraxia of speech after a stroke in the left inferior parietal lobe. He demonstrated predominant difficulties in reading phonogram. KS, a 51-year-old woman, had an intracerebral hemorrhage in the left parietal lobe. She showed anomic aphasia and a selective impairment on reading ideogram. These findings support the notion that recognition of visual words is processed in different ways depending on the characteristics of orthographic systems.

Published 1 February 2006 in Eur Neurol, 54(4): 199-203.
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