-
Continuum (Minneapolis, Minn.) Dec 2021Up to 80% of survivors of right brain stroke leave acute care without being diagnosed with a major invisible disability. Studies indicate that a generic cognitive... (Review)
Review
PURPOSE OF REVIEW
Up to 80% of survivors of right brain stroke leave acute care without being diagnosed with a major invisible disability. Studies indicate that a generic cognitive neurologic evaluation does not reliably detect spatial neglect, nor does it identify unawareness of deficit after right brain stroke; this article reviews the symptoms, clinical presentation, and management of these two cognitive disorders occurring after right brain stroke.
RECENT FINDINGS
Stroke and occupational therapy practice guidelines stress a quality standard for spatial neglect assessment and treatment to reduce adverse outcomes for patients, their families, and society. Neurologists may attribute poor outcomes associated with spatial neglect to stroke severity. However, people with spatial neglect are half as likely to return to home and community, have one-third the community mobility, and require 3 times as much caregiver supervision compared with similar stroke survivors. Multiple randomized trials support a feasible first-line rehabilitation approach for spatial neglect: prism adaptation therapy; more than 20 studies reported that this treatment improves daily life independence. Evidence-based treatment of anosognosia is not as developed; however, treatment for this problem is also available.
SUMMARY
This article guides neurologists' assessment of right brain cognitive disorders and describes how to efficiently assemble and direct a treatment team to address spatial neglect and unawareness of deficit.
Topics: Agnosia; Brain; Humans; Perceptual Disorders; Stroke; Stroke Rehabilitation
PubMed: 34881729
DOI: 10.1212/CON.0000000000001076 -
Revista de Neurologia Feb 2020Hemineglect produces a lower capacity for recovery after the stroke and so far there are no rehabilitation techniques that have proven to be effective at functional... (Randomized Controlled Trial)
Randomized Controlled Trial
INTRODUCTION
Hemineglect produces a lower capacity for recovery after the stroke and so far there are no rehabilitation techniques that have proven to be effective at functional level.
AIMS
The main objective of this work was to assess whether the modified constraint-induced movement therapy (mCIMT)for hemineglect produces greater benefits than conventional therapy on functional hemineglect. Secondary objectives were to assess whether mCIMT produces greater benefits on upper and lower limb function as well as on the degree of autonomy and disability of patients with in relation to conventional therapy.
PATIENTS AND METHODS
We have recruited 30 patients with ischemic stroke and diagnosis of hemineglect randomly assigned to mCIMT group (n = 15) or conventional therapy group (n = 15). We used the Catherine Bergego Scale (CBS) for assessment hemineglect; Fugl-Meyer tests for the motor function of lower and upper limb, and Barthel index and modified Rankin scale for the rest of objectives.
RESULTS
We have found significant differences in favour of mCIMT group in the CBS after treatment and three months later once finished. We have not found differences between groups for the rest of variables.
CONCLUSIONS
mCIMT could be a more effective therapy than conventional therapy to improve the symptoms of hemineglect in the acute stroke. However, it may be clinically more recommended in patients with a certain motor function after stroke.
Topics: Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Agnosia; Female; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Physical Therapy Modalities; Stroke; Stroke Rehabilitation; Treatment Outcome
PubMed: 32043533
DOI: 10.33588/rn.7004.2019330 -
Handbook of Clinical Neurology 2015Auditory agnosia refers to impairments in sound perception and identification despite intact hearing, cognitive functioning, and language abilities (reading, writing,... (Review)
Review
Auditory agnosia refers to impairments in sound perception and identification despite intact hearing, cognitive functioning, and language abilities (reading, writing, and speaking). Auditory agnosia can be general, affecting all types of sound perception, or can be (relatively) specific to a particular domain. Verbal auditory agnosia (also known as (pure) word deafness) refers to deficits specific to speech processing, environmental sound agnosia refers to difficulties confined to non-speech environmental sounds, and amusia refers to deficits confined to music. These deficits can be apperceptive, affecting basic perceptual processes, or associative, affecting the relation of a perceived auditory object to its meaning. This chapter discusses what is known about the behavioral symptoms and lesion correlates of these different types of auditory agnosia (focusing especially on verbal auditory agnosia), evidence for the role of a rapid temporal processing deficit in some aspects of auditory agnosia, and the few attempts to treat the perceptual deficits associated with auditory agnosia. A clear picture of auditory agnosia has been slow to emerge, hampered by the considerable heterogeneity in behavioral deficits, associated brain damage, and variable assessments across cases. Despite this lack of clarity, these striking deficits in complex sound processing continue to inform our understanding of auditory perception and cognition.
Topics: Agnosia; Humans
PubMed: 25726291
DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-444-62630-1.00032-9 -
Current Neurology and Neuroscience... Aug 2020Gerstmann (left angular gyrus) syndrome includes the tetrad of finger agnosia (inability to distinguish, name, and recognize the fingers), agraphia (acquired disturbance... (Review)
Review
PURPOSE OF REVIEW
Gerstmann (left angular gyrus) syndrome includes the tetrad of finger agnosia (inability to distinguish, name, and recognize the fingers), agraphia (acquired disturbance in the ability to write), acalculia (loss of the ability to perform arithmetical operations and use numerical concepts), and right-left disorientation (right-left discrimination defect when using language). There is some disagreement regarding its exact localization, but it most likely involves the left angular gyrus with a probable subcortical extension. This article reviews recent research on the clinical aspects of this syndrome.
RECENT FINDINGS
During the last years, just some few new reports of Gerstmann syndrome are found in neurological and neuropsychological literature. Most of the reports are single-case reports. An association between Gerstmann syndrome and the so-called semantic aphasia has been pointed out. Two different explanations to this unusual syndrome have been recently proposed: (1) the pathological process is located in the left parietal white matter disconnecting separate cortical networks and (2) it represents a disturbance in the ability to verbally mediate some spatial knowledge. Although Gerstmann syndrome continues as a controversial syndrome, and most of the reports are single case reports, recently two different explanations have been advance the understanding of this polemic but fascinating syndrome.
Topics: Agnosia; Gerstmann Syndrome; Humans
PubMed: 32852667
DOI: 10.1007/s11910-020-01069-9 -
Cortex; a Journal Devoted To the Study... Nov 2020
Topics: Humans; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Prosopagnosia; Recognition, Psychology
PubMed: 32951850
DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2020.08.010 -
Cortex; a Journal Devoted To the Study... Jun 2018
Topics: Agnosia; Humans; Neuropsychological Tests
PubMed: 29731103
DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2018.04.001 -
Handbook of Clinical Neurology 2022The ventral temporal cortex hosts key regions for the high-level visual processing of object shape and color. These areas represent nodes of large-scale neural circuits... (Review)
Review
The ventral temporal cortex hosts key regions for the high-level visual processing of object shape and color. These areas represent nodes of large-scale neural circuits dedicated to object recognition. In the language-dominant hemisphere, some of these regions communicate with the language systems; by assigning verbal labels to percepts, these circuits speedup stimulus categorization, and permit fast and accurate interindividual communication. By impairing the functioning of these circuits, neurological damage may provoke disabling disorders of the processing of visual objects and of their colors. Brain damage of vascular, degenerative, toxic, or traumatic origin can induce deficits at different levels of visual processing, from the building of shape- or wavelength-invariant percepts, to their connections with semantic knowledge and with the appropriate lexical entry. After an overview of the neuroimaging of domain-preferring regions for object shape and color in the ventral temporal cortex, this chapter reviews evidence from historical and recent cases of acquired visual agnosia and color processing deficits. A recurrent motif emerging from patients' patterns of performance and lesion locations is the existence of caudo-rostral gradients in the ventral occipito-temporal cortex, spanning from more perceptual to more cognitive stages of processing.
Topics: Agnosia; Color; Humans; Language; Temporal Lobe; Visual Perception
PubMed: 35964971
DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-12-823493-8.00022-5 -
Frontiers of Neurology and Neuroscience 2019Even if Babinski (1914) is usually considered as the discoverer of anosognosia, other authors before him contributed to the development of this construct. Von Monakow... (Review)
Review
Even if Babinski (1914) is usually considered as the discoverer of anosognosia, other authors before him contributed to the development of this construct. Von Monakow (1885) and Dejerine and Vialet (1893) gave the first descriptions of patients with cortical blindness who were unaware of their disability, but did not distinguish this unawareness from the rest of the clinical description. Anton (1999) described patients with cortical deafness and cortical blindness, considering these defects of awareness as a symptom independent from the neurological dysfunction. He conceptualized them as a phenomenon in its own right and tried to link this unawareness of a disability with specific neuro-anatomical changes. Finally, Babinski (1914) coined the term "anosognosia" to designate the clinical entity conceptualized by Anton (1899) and extended this concept from the unawareness of cortical deafness and blindness to the unawareness of hemiplegia. The choice of the term "anosognosia" to denote the observed phenomenon was important, because referring to "lack of knowledge of the disease" (anosognosia), he not only emphasized the separation between "lack of knowledge" and "disease, " but also suggested a general use of this term, because disease can refer to many other disabilities besides hemiplegia. Further investigations have shown that: (a) brain-damaged patients may be unaware of different kinds of disabilities; (b) anosognosia can be selective, in that an affected person with multiple impairments may be unaware of only one handicap, while appearing fully aware of any others; and (c) lack of acknowledgment of a disease may not necessarily be due to a defective awareness, but must sometimes be considered as an extreme but understable pattern of adaptation to stress. For this condition, the term "Denial of Illness" seems preferable to that of anosognosia. Anosognosia must perhaps be viewed as a multifaceted phenomenon, resulting from both cognitive and motivational factors.
Topics: Agnosia; Awareness; Hemiplegia; History, 19th Century; History, 20th Century; Humans; Neurology; Stroke
PubMed: 31220837
DOI: 10.1159/000494954 -
Continuum (Minneapolis, Minn.) Jun 2018In part because of their striking clinical presentations, disorders of higher nervous system function figured prominently in the early history of neurology. These... (Review)
Review
PURPOSE OF REVIEW
In part because of their striking clinical presentations, disorders of higher nervous system function figured prominently in the early history of neurology. These disorders are not merely historical curiosities, however. As apraxia, neglect, and agnosia have important clinical implications, it is important to possess a working knowledge of the conditions and how to identify them.
RECENT FINDINGS
Apraxia is a disorder of skilled action that is frequently observed in the setting of dominant hemisphere pathology, whether from stroke or neurodegenerative disorders. In contrast to some previous teaching, apraxia has clear clinical relevance as it is associated with poor recovery from stroke. Neglect is a complex disorder with many different manifestations that may have different underlying mechanisms. Neglect is, in the author's view, a multicomponent disorder in which impairment in attention and arousal is a major contributor. Finally, agnosias come in a wide variety of forms, reflecting impairments ranging from low-level sensory processing to access to stored knowledge of the world (semantics).
SUMMARY
The classic behavioral disorders reviewed here were of immense interest to early neurologists because of their arresting clinical phenomenology; more recent investigations have done much to advance the neuroscientific understanding of the disorders and to reveal their clinical relevance.
Topics: Agnosia; Apraxias; Attention; Humans; Neglected Diseases; Perceptual Disorders; Stroke
PubMed: 29851877
DOI: 10.1212/CON.0000000000000606 -
Frontiers of Neurology and Neuroscience 2019Tracing the history of neglect is intriguing, as diverse terminologies have been used to characterize a multi-factorial disorder with rather startling manifestations. In... (Review)
Review
Tracing the history of neglect is intriguing, as diverse terminologies have been used to characterize a multi-factorial disorder with rather startling manifestations. In part, heterogeneous terms may have hinted at distinct subtypes. Thus, different variants of hemi-inattention and neglect relate conceptually, but may be functionally dissociable. Patients with neglect, acting as if the world-space they perceive is full, do not phenomenally experience the omissions or absences so patently obvious to an observer. From the late 19th century, hemi-inattention was described according to its prominent manifestations, visual, bodily or spatial. Since then, diverse terms including imperception, inattention, unilateral visual inattention, unilateral spatial agnosia, and neglect, among others, reflected proposed underlying mechanisms. Major theories presented to account for this curious, even astonishing, neurological disorder, included disruption of body-scheme, perceptual rivalry and extinction, forgetting or amnesia for half the body, and highly nuanced models of distribution of directed spatial attention, and of disrupted perceptual processes. Unlike neurological counterparts, already designated as hemi-syndromes by the first part of the 20th century, not until about 1970 did neglect become so broadly recognized as a syndrome. Earlier, commonalities were identified, features conceptually clustered, and then subtypes were distinguished. Neglect was designated as an overarching term for a class of disorder with distinct subtypes, including visual, motor, extrapersonal, bodily or personal, other somatosensory, and representational. Specificity for modality, chronology, material, and symptom severity was noted. Remarkable clinical, neuropsychological, and behavioral manifestations of hemi-inattention and neglect may involve varying proposed mechanisms of higher cognitive functions, all within a spectrum of clinical disorder. Concepts of connectivity and interaction, neural networks, and functional integration enhance understanding of dysfunction, recovery, and compensation in neglect and inattention. Focus on distinct manifestations clustered under the umbrella of neglect offers a vantage point for examining historical trends in approach to the phenomenon.
Topics: Agnosia; Allesthesia; Attention; History, 20th Century; Humans; Perceptual Disorders; Research Personnel; Terminology as Topic
PubMed: 31220845
DOI: 10.1159/000494956