@misc{oai:repo.qst.go.jp:00071017,
 author = {Takahata, Keisuke and et.al and 高畑 圭輔},
 month = {Dec},
 note = {Background: It has been proposed that prefrontal damage can sometimes give rise to an unexpected enhancement of specific cognitive abilities. In 1998, Miller reported 5 cases where patients developed artistic skills in the early stage of Front-temporal dementia (FTD). These 5 cases, called acquired savant syndrome, share a feature that their paintings are characterized by intensive focus on spatial information. Although such features indicate a background change of visuo-spatial abilities, it remains an open issue. Here, we investigated prefrontal functions and visuo-spatial abilities of the patient who showed enhanced artistic skills after left frontal infarction. 
Method: The patient was 65 years old man. He suffered from focal brain infarction in left prefrontal cortex. After brain infarction, the patient developed painting skills. Prefrontal functions of the patients were examined using neuropsychological tests before and after brain infarction. Next, to characterize painting skills of the patient, professional reviewers made blind evaluations of two paintings that had been painted before and after brain infarction. Finally, we compared patient's performance of three visuo-spatial cognitive tasks ( line bisection task, dots estimation task and dots comparison task) with those of 7 healthy controls. 
Results: Neuropsychological examinations revealed prefrontal dysfunctions. Nevertheless,  painting ability was rather promoted after infarction, and shared features similar to those of previously reported cases. Furthermore, results of numerical cognitive tasks showed superior performance compared to healthy controls.
Conclusion: Our data provide supportive evidence that acquired savant skills after left prefrontal infarction are related to enhanced visuo-spatial abilities., Bennial Meeting of World Federation of Neurology Research Group on Aphasia and Cognitive Disorders},
 title = {Change in artistic style after left prefrontal brain damage: Enhanced visuo-spatial cognition.},
 year = {2012}
}