Number words are special: Evidence from a case of primary progressive aphasia

• Published in: Journal of neurolinguistics Vol. 19; no. 1; pp. 1 - 37
• Main Authors: Domahs, Frank, Bartha, Lisa, Lochy, Aliette, Benke, Thomas, Delazer, Margarete
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 2006
• Subjects: Aphasia; Lexical impairment; Neurolinguistics; Numbers; Numerals; Primary progressive aphasia; Semantic processing; Speech production; Transcoding; Primary progressive aphasia; Numerals; Lexical impairment; Transcoding
• ISSN: 0911-6044; 1873-8052
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jneuroling.2005.07.001

We present a patient with primary progressive aphasia who showed no problems dealing with a variety of semantic tasks for simple nouns and numerical material. However, massive impairments became apparent in all lexical input and output tasks for non-number words, whereas peripheral processing was demonstrated to be intact. Interestingly, no parallel impairment was observed for numerals. This is the first case study reporting an isolated sparing of number words at the level of lexical processing in all four modalities.