Chapter 11-12 Assessment and treatment: Visuospatial, awareness, and representation of body parts

Question 1

What is autopoagnosia?

Answer 1

• Autotopagnosia is the inability to locate body parts in response to command. The nature of this disturbance is not well understood in terms of the mental representations and cognitive processes involved.

Question 2

What is the rehabilitative procedure for autopoagnosia?

Answer 2

• Retraining. The therapist might ask the patient: Show me your ear, nose, mouth etc.

Question 3

What is Personal neglect?

Answer 3

• Selective personal neglect mostly occurs after right-sided lesions. It’s the inability to perceive one-half of the patient’s body.

Question 4

What is anosognosia?

Answer 4

• Patients who are anosognosic for deficits contralateral to their lesion may show all degrees of severity, from minimization to obstinate denial of illness or of possession of the affected limb, even in the face of demonstrations by the examiners.

Question 5

What is somatoparaphrenic delusions?

Answer 5

• a typical instance of which is the attribution of a plegic limb to the examiner or to other people. “this is not my arm, must be yours or someone else’s”.

Question 6

Describe Alien hand syndrome:

Answer 6

• The alien hand syndrome is a loosely defined cluster of symptoms, characterized by involuntary movements of a limb in conjunction with an experience of estrangement from and personification of the limb itself (see Blakemore et al. (2002)). The limb is perceived as having a will of its own, though ownership is seldom denied.

Question 7

Give examples of Altered muscular proprioception:

Answer 7

• Put on clothes with the right hand and pull them off with the left hand.
• Open a drawer or a door with the right hand and simultaneously push it shut with the left hand.
• Dry the clean dishes and then put them back in the pan to be washed again.
• When thirsty fill a glass with water and then pour it out (following callosotomy; Akelaitis 1945).

Question 8

What causes altered muscular proprioception?

Answer 8

• One type of patient has been observed with a very selective and complete loss of large sensory fibres, while motor and small sensory
• fibres are left intact. Muscular proprioception is lost but vestibular information as well as the senses of pain and temperature is retained.

Question 9

Describe phantom limbs:

Answer 9

Phantom limb is the experience of limb that isn’t there. It’s most often experienced by amputees who feel the presence (sometimes followed by pain and discomfort) of the amputated limb.

Question 10

Who experience the existence of phantom limbs?

Answer 10

• Amputees and it has also been reported in conditions such as brachial plexus avulsion, spinal cord damage, and even single spinal anaesthesia.