Rapid recovery of aphasia and deep dyslexia after cerebrovascular left-hemisphere damage in childhood

Abstract This paper reports a case of acquired language impairment in an 8.5-year-old right-handed Belgian boy (BV). He had normally acquired his native language (Flemish/Belgian Dutch) as well as a second language (French), and he was a very good pupil in school. Following a vascular accident in the left hemisphere, the patient initially presented a pure pattern of deep dyslexia associated with a non-fluent aphasia with phonemic paraphasias. The deep dyslexic symptoms disappeared within six weeks, and the aphasie impairments were no longer observable after 4.5 months. One year after the cerebro-vascular accident, the boy reached top-level academic records in school. The initial combination of a transient deep dyslexia and subsequent rapid recovery from aphasia will be discussed with reference to theories on right hemisphere reading in deep dyslexia and inter-hemispheric linguistic transferability. Results of functional magnetic resonance spectroscopy taken during speech stimulation one year post onset do not support the notion that rapid recovery in this case of childhood aphasia was due to a right hemisphere take-over of language.