Progressive ventral posterior cortical degeneration presenting as alexia for music and words

Patients with posterior cortical atrophy may have dorsal visual system (occipital-parietal) dysfunction (optic ataxia, visuospatial disorientation, and simultanagnosia), ventral visual system (occipital-temporal) dysfunction (pure alexia, prosopagnosia, visual anemia, and agnosia), or both. We report a professional musician with ventral system dysfunction whose first symptom was alexia for music. Subsequently, she developed pure alexia for words but had preserved sorting of words. These observations suggest that the ventral visual system is important in music and word reading. However, sorting of words may be mediated by the dorsal visual system.