[A case of pure alexia and foreign accent syndrome following acute encephalopathy in the presence of anti-glutamate receptor antibodies].

A 41-year-old right-handed woman presented abnormal behavior two weeks after suffering from headache and fever. Anti-glutamate receptor antibodies in the serum and cerebrospinal fluid were positive and we diagnosed anti-glutamate receptor antibody-related encephalopathy. The patient improved after administration of corticosteroid and was discharged without neurological deficit. After discharge, pure alexia and foreign accent syndrome-like language disturbance appeared consecutively. The serial fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography scans suggested that pure alexia and FAS-like language disturbance may have been caused by low function of the occipital lobes and the left frontal lobe, respectively. FAS has been linked to various lesions in the brain. The background mechanism may therefore be heterogeneous. On the other hand, patients with this syndrome recover spontaneously with our case. FAS may therefore be a temporal phenomenon resulting from imbalance in language processing rather than a specific deficit.