Ictal Pure Word Deafness with Auditory Hallucination

Pure word deafness is a disorder of auditory verbal comprehension without dysfunction of speaking, reading, or writing. This rare symptom arises from bilateral lesions in the temporal lobes or disconnection between the primary auditory cortex and Wernicke’s area. I present a right-handed 33-year-old woman who presented with pure word deafness and complex auditory hallucination with intermittent amnesia. She had no generalized convulsion. There was no intracranial lesion on plain or gadoliniumenhanced magnetic resonance imaging. Electroencephalogram revealed theta waves in the left temporal-occipital region followed by high-amplitude slow wave burst during hyperventilation. Carbamazepine completely ameliorated the pure word deafness and auditory hallucination. This is the first report of pure word deafness resulting from primary complex partial seizure. The epileptic focus might lie along the auditory word processing pathway between the left auditory cortex and Wernicke’s area.