A person with injury to the occipital cortex may develop a progressive dementia.
Clinical findings:
(1) visual impairment (difficulty reading and drawing not explained by poor visual acuity)
(2) slowly progressive dementia
Variable findings:
(1) optic ataxia (difficulty with visually guided hand movements)
(2) ocular apraxia
(3) simultanagnosia
(4) right-left confusion
(5) agraphia
(6) myoclonus
(7) alexia
(8) anomia
(9) aphasia
Features distinguishing this syndrome for Alzheimer's disease:
(1) relative preservation of memory skills
(2) brain pathology limited to the occipital lobe (relative sparing of other parts of the brain)
(3) good insight into visual disturbance
(4) normal fluency
