Abstract: Objective To analyze the neurolinguistic features of a Chinese patient with pure alexia in acute and convalescent
stages. Methods We assessed the reading and writing abilities of the patient with the Aphasia Battery of Chinese (ABC), the
reading examination of Chinese characters (1999, Lin) and the Chinese agraphia battery (CAB). Results In the ABC
examination in the acute phase, the patient performed well in oral expression and comprehension, and the prominent
linguistic abnormalities were alexia and merging agraphia; in the convalescent phase, the recovery of alexia was better than
that of agraphia. In reading examination of Chinese characters, shape errors were the main reading disorders in the acute
phase with a few semantic errors, regularization errors and mistakes in pronunciation, but only shape errors reappeared in the
recovery period. CAB examination showed impairment of writing for pictures and dictation abilities in the recovery period but
recovery of other writing abilities. The writing disorder was manifested as aphasic agraphia, with obvious dysorthography
and lexical errors; the patient was capable of spontaneous writing only after spontaneous speech, and was able to read the
written words. Conclusion The linguistic components of the Chinese patient with pure alexia showed different patterns of
damage and recovery, suggesting the difference in their respective neuropsychological pathways.