Utilization behaviour (and associated motor abnormalities)

Question 1

Utilization behaviour’ (

Answer 1

refers to the automatic elicitation of instrumentally correct, yet highly exaggerated and or inappropriate motor responses to environmental cues and objects.

Patients with UB are described as reaching out and automatically using objects in the environment in an object-appropriate manner that is inappropriate for the particular context. For example, a patient may pick up a toothbrush and begin to brush his teeth, in response to a toothbrush being placed in front of him, but in a context or setting in which brushing teeth would not normally be expected or done, such as in an appointment with a doctor.

Utilization behaviour results from lesions of the frontal lobe whereby there is a loss of normal inhibitory control.

Question 2

Imitation behaviour

Answer 2

refers to a patients tendency to imitate an examiners behaviour.

Question 3

Alien hand sign

Answer 3

refers to the experience of bizarre hands movements for which the patient feels no sense of control.

Question 4

Manual groping behaviour

Answer 4

refers to situations where the hand (and often the eyes as well) follow an object under examination, again in a somewhat magnetic fashion. Following tactile stimulation, automatic manual manipulation is observed. The patients may, for example, hold, rub, or manipulate objects placed in front of them or on their own person (e.g., buttons, the fabric of collars, etc.).

Question 5

‘Environmental Dependency Syndrome’

Answer 5

describes the deficits in personal control of action and a striking overreliance on social and physical environmental stimuli for guiding ones behaviour in a more elaborate social context. For example, one patient, upon being told that the examiners office was an art gallery, began staring and commenting on pictures as if they were on display.