The maintenance of the ability to process non-speech auditory information, including music, also remains relatively more intact than spoken language comprehension.
The term "pure word" refers to the fact that comprehension of verbal information is selectively impaired in AVA.
Auditory verbal agnosia can both present as the result of acute damage or as chronic, progressive degeneration over time.
[12] In childhood, auditory verbal agnosia can also be caused by Landau-Kleffner syndrome, also called acquired epileptic aphasia.
There is no uniform performance among patients with auditory verbal agnosia; therefore it is not possible to attribute specific phonetic or phonological deficits to the syndrome.
The fact that AVA patients have the ability to read shows that both the semantic system and the speech output lexicon are intact.
[18] According to this study, one form of AVA is a deficit at the prephonemic level and is related to the inability to comprehend rapid changes in sound.
The underlying problem seems to be temporal in that understanding speech requires the discrimination between specific sounds which are closely spaced in time.
[19] Note that this is not unique to speech; studies using non-speech sounds closely spaced in time (dog bark, phone ring, lightning, etc.)
have shown that those with auditory verbal agnosia are unable to discriminate between those sounds in the majority of cases, though a few putative examples of speech-specific impairment have been documented in the literature.
In cases where unilateral damage to the left superior temporal lobe has been documented, patients exhibited problems processing both speech and non-speech sounds (in other words, not typical of auditory verbal agnosia).
Many of the bilateral cases share one essential feature: after the first (unilateral) lesion, speech perception was typically intact after an initial period of disturbance.
The fact that most of these patients only manifested auditory verbal agnosia subsequent to the second lesion supports the hypothesis that both sides of the superior temporal gyrus are necessary.
Auditory verbal agnosia can present as the result of acute damage or chronic, progressive degeneration over time.
This is particularly important with AVA cases because it has been so hard to identify the causes of the agnosia in the first place, much less treat those areas directly.
In the beginning of therapy, most will work on identifying key objects and establishing an initial core vocabulary of signs.
[21] Because different AVA patients vary in the level of speech or comprehension they have, sign language therapy learning order and techniques are very specific to the individual's needs.
[22] Treating auditory verbal agnosia with intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) is controversial because of its inconsistency as a treatment method.
In a study conducted by Masaaki Nagafuchi et al. (1993), a 7-year-old girl began taking a dose of 2 mg diazepam orally every day.
Her audiological recognition had remained normal from the time of onset (i.e., she could recognize familiar noises such as a baby crying or a telephone ringing).