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New Technique Enables Patient With 'Word Blindness' to Read Again

3rd January, 2014

[Source: Science Daily]
loyola

In the journal Neurology, researchers report a novel technique that enables a patient with “word blindness” to read again.

Word blindness is a rare neurological condition. (The medical term is “alexia without agraphia.”) Although a patient can write and understand the spoken word, the patient is unable to read.
The article is written by Jason Cuomo, Murray Flaster, MD, PhD and Jose Biller, MD, of Loyola University Medical Center.
Here’s how the technique works: When shown a word, the patient looks at the first letter. Although she clearly sees it, she cannot recognize it. So beginning with the letter A, she traces each letter of the alphabet over the unknown letter until she gets a match. For example, when shown the word Mother, she will trace the letters of the alphabet, one at a time, until she comes to M and finds a match. Three letters later, she guesses correctly that the word is Mother.
“To see this curious adaption in practice is to witness the very unique and focal nature” of the deficit, the authors write.
The authors describe how word blindness came on suddenly to a 40-year-old kindergarten teacher and reading specialist. She couldn’t make sense of her lesson plan, and her attendance sheet was as incomprehensible as hieroglyphs. She also couldn’t tell time.
Read the Rest of this Article on Science Daily

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