Forgetting How to Read
A sign, symptom and consequence of brain injury can be the loss of ability to read.
Scanning these words takes less than a minute, but it also sparks a complex chain of neurological processes. So what happens when the mind’s circuitry goes haywire? As Kurt Kleiner reports, reading disorders like those of Toronto novelist Howard Engel are helping scientists decode the mystery of the literate brain.
Someone who views words as jumbled, can write but not read, or forgets how to read a foreign language, but not English, is said to suffer from pure alexia or alexia without agraphia.
The condition was first described in 1892 by French neurologist, Joseph Jules Dejeine. His patient could no longer read, name colors or make out musical notes. At death and after autopsy, Dr. Dejeine’s patient was found with a lesion in the left occipital region of the brain – used for vision – and also at the back of the corpus callosum, which connects the right and left hemispheres of the brain.
In The Man Who Forgot How to Read, Howard Engel, 76, describes his battle with the condition known as pure alexia. Interestingly, though Engel can no longer read fluently, he still manages to write as he did before and understands spoken language.
