Dear Colleagues,
Perhaps you could help me find answers to several questions on the neural organization of alphabet and number recitation:
1. Could recitation of numbers and letters rely on phonological long-term memory without accessing lexical information? Alternatively, could lexical information be accessed only for numbers (since they are words) but not letters (that are not words)?
2. Several neuroimaging studies (including clinical reports) have shown a dissociation between letter and number sequencing (recitation, reading and writing). Why do you think this is the case?
3. A patient could not recite the alphabet but could sing it upon electrical brain stimulation. Any suggestions why this happened?
Help with any of the questions will be greatly appreciated!
Thank you!
Monika
Dear Monika! Please see related articles in Attachment. All the best. Vladimir
These are stored as automatic motor sequences that are stored and run off as "a single piece" rather than individual items. As regards the ability to sing the alphabet rather than recite it, singing the alphabet is usually learned very early (18mos - 2 yrs), and may be stored differently and in a different part of the brain (R. hemisphere?) than a spoken recitation. Also singing has long been used to help stutterers. Don't know if this is exactly on point but I hope it helps. I suspect the articles shared by Dr. Kulchitsky will be more useful and detailed.
Another tidbit that supports different storage and retrieval mechanisms (the single unit notion). Very often severe aphasics retain the ability to count (at least to 10) and recite the alphabet, in the face of otherwise severe expressive aphasia with little else preserved.
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