Who is Leonardo Da Vinci?

You probably know Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) for his paintings, specifically for his most famous paintings: the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper.  What may not be as common for people to know about him is the way he wrote.  He wrote a lot in his notebooks, but his writing was so different that not many people could read and understand it, other than scholars that knew him.  His handwriting was very strange, so strange  that people thought he was writing in code.  Was this just a case of surface dysgraphia that Da Vinci had?

What is surface dysgraphia?

Dysgraphia is when an individual has difficulty with spelling and writing.  Individuals with surface dysgraphia are better at spelling to dictation with regularly spelled words as well as non words and are impaired when spelling irregular words.  Dysgraphia occurs because of damage to the lexical semantic route and reliance on phoneme-grapheme conversion.

Is it true that Leonardo Da Vinci had surface dysgraphia?

Many people thought Da Vinci was writing in code to make sure no one stole any of his ideas.  People also wondered if he was just writing from right to left because he did not want to smudge the ink due to the fact that he wrote with his left hand.  As a matter of fact though, he did not write in code he just had trouble writing and spelling.  He was not good with spelling and made many spelling errors in his notebooks.  Leonardo Da Vinci wrote in his notebooks in mirror reversed script.  Mirror writing is when someone writes back to front or begins on the right side of the page and moves leftward.  The letters are also in mirror image distortion of their conventional form, which many people interpret as code.  It was probably also very likely that Da Vinci also had surface dyslexia, because many people who have trouble with spelling and writing also have trouble with reading. Surface dyslexia is having an impairment in reading irregularly spelled words, but having the ability to read regularly spelled words and nonwords.  It is very likely that Leonardo Da Vinci had surface dysgraphia due to the way he wrote and most likely had surface dyslexia because it is very common to have both dyslexia and dysgraphia.  

References:

Ward, Jamie. “Amnesia.” The Student’s Guide to Cognitive Neuroscience. Hove, East Sussex: Psychology, 2010. 204-11. Print.

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